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e^^TANjMfCD LlTERg^-^ 


Vol. 3, No. 137. July 11, 1883. Annual Snbseriptioii, $25.00. 


CRUEL 


LONDON 


JOSEPH HATTON 

AUTHOR OF 


IN THE LAP OF FORTUNE, 
Etc., Etc. 


CLYTIE 


XaUrcd at the Poet Office, N. T., ae aecond-claaa matter. 
Copyricht, 1883, by John W. Lovbli. Co. 


To t\N • W • L ovg L L • c o/APAN Y+ 

~^==:=========t====== 1+ fc.16 V^EY STREET 


'itat CLOTH BINDING for this vobune can be obtained from any bookselter or new.^cfeafnr, pricn lOctw 






** Dr. Newton has had given to him the spiritual 
sense of what people wanted, and this he has rev^ 
crently^ clearly and definitely furnished.” — Boston 
Herald, March 17. 


THE RIGHT AND WRONG 


SES OF THE BIB 


By Rev. R. Heber Newton. 


1 
uJj. 


No. 83, “Lotell’s Library,” Paper Covers, 20 Cents; Axso 
IN Cloth, Red Edges, 75 Cents, 


“ Dr. Newton has not seprircted his heart from his head in these 
religious studies, and has thus been preserved from the mistakes 
which a purely critical mind might have been led.” — JT. Times, 
March 12. 

“Those who wish to abuse Dr. Newton should do so before 
reading his lectures, as, after reading them, they may find it quite 
impossible to do so.” — N, T. Star, March 11. 

“ It is impossible to read these sermons without high admiration 
of the author’s courage ; of his honesty, his reverential spirit, his 
I w^ide and careful reading, and his true conservatism .” — American 
Literary Churchman, 

For sale by all Newsdealers and Booksellers. 

JOHN W. LOVELL CO., Publishers, 


14t& 16 Vesey St., New York. 


LOVELL’S LIBRARY. 

O^T^LOG-'CTE. 


1. .H 5 rperion, by H. W. Longfellow 

2. Outre-Mer, by H. W. Longfellow 

3. The Happy Boy, by BjhmBon. . . 

' 4. Arne, by Bjomson 

I 5. Frankenstein; or, the Modern Pro- 
j metheus, by Mrs. Shelley 

6. The Last of the Mohicans, by J. 

Fenimore Cooper 20 

7. Clytie, by Joseph Hatton 20 

8. The Moonstone, by Collins, P’t I. .10 
i 9. The Moonstone, by Collins, P’t II. 10 

) 10. Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens. 20 

11. The Coming Race, by Lytton 10 

12. Leila, by Lord Lytton 10 

13. The Three Spaniards, by Walker.. 20 
14. The Tricks of the Greeks Un veiled; 
or, the Art of Winning at every 

Game, by Robert Houdin 20 

15. L’Abbe Constantin, by Hal6vy. .20 

16. Freckles, by R. F. Redcliff 20 

17. The Dark Colleen, by Harriett Jay .20 
18. They Were Married I by Walter Be- 

gant and James Rice ...10 

1 9. Seekers after God, by Canon Farrar , 20 
20. The Spanish Nun, by Thos. De 

Quincey 10 

21. The Green Mountain Boys, by 

Judge D. P. Thompson 20 

22. Fleurette, by Eugene Scribe 20 

23. Second Thoughts, by . Rhoda 

Broughton 20 

24. The New Magdalen, by Wilkie 

Collins 20 

25. Divorce, by Margaret Lee 20 

26. Life of Washington, by Henley.. 20 
27. Social Etiquette, by Mrs. W. A. 

Saville 15 

28. Single Heart and Double Face, by 

Charles Reade 10 

29. Irene, by Carl Detlef 20 

30. ViceVersh; or, a Lesson to Fathers, 

by F. Anstej^ 20 

.81 . Ernest Maltravers, by Lord Lytton .20 
32. The Haunted House and Calderon 
1 the Courtier, by Lord Lytton... 10 

! .33. John Halifax, by Miss Mulock 20 

; .31. 800 Leagues on the Amazon, being 
Part I of the Giant Raft, by 

Jules Verne 10 

. ;5. The Cryptogram, being Part II of 
•’ ; the Giant Raft, by Jules Verne.. 10 
j ,56 Life of Marion, by Horry and W eem s . 20 
: 'i7, l^aul and Virginia 10 


.38. Tale Of Two Cities, by Dickens 20 

39. The Hermits, by Kingsley 20 

4'J. An Adventure in Thule, and Mar- 
riage of Moira Fergus, by Wm. 
Black 10 

41 . A Marriage in High Life, by Octave 

Feuillet 20 

42. Robin, by Mrs. Parr 20 

43. Two on a Tower, byThomas Hardy .20 

44. Rasselas, by Samuel Johnson 10 


45. Alice, or, the Mysteries, being Part 


II of Ernest Maltravers 20 

46. Duke of Kandos, by A. Matthey ... 20 

47. Baron Munchausen 10 

48. A Princess of Thule, by Wm. Black. 20 

49. The Secret Despatch, by Grant 20 

60. Early Days of Christianity, by Can- 
on Farrar, D,D., Part 1 50. 

Early Days of Christianity, by Can- 
on Farrar, D.D., Part II 20 

51. Vicar of Wakefield, by Oliver Gold- 

smith 10 

52. Progress and Poverty, by Henry 

George 20 


53. The Spy, by J. Fenimore Cooper. . . 20 

54. East Lynne, by Mrs. Henry Wood.20 

55. A Strange Story, by Lord Lytton. . 20 

56. Adam Bede, by Geo. Eliot, Part I.. 15 
Adam Bede, by Geo. Eliot, Part II. .15 

57. The Golden Shaft, by Gibbon. 20 

58. Portia, or. By Passions Rocked, by 


The Duchess 20 

59. Last Days of Pompeii, by Lytton . 20 

60. The Two Duchesses, being the se- 

quel to the Duke of Kandos, by 
A. Mathey 20 

61. Tom Brown’s School Days at Rug- 

by 20 

62. TheWooing O’t, by Mrs. Alexander, 

Part I 15 

TheWooing O’t, by Mrs. Alexander, 
Part II 15 

63. The Vendetta, Tates of Love and 

Passion, by Honore de Balzac.. 20 


64. Hypatia, by Rev. Kingsley, Part I. . 1 5 
Hypatia, by Kingsley, Part II. ...15 

65. Selma, by Mrs. J. Gregory Smith ..15 

66. Margaret and her Bridesmaids. .. 20 


67. Horse Shoe Robinson, Parti 15 

Horse Shoe Robinson, Part II 15 

68. Gulliver’s Travels, by Dean Swift. .20 

69. Amos Barton, by George Eliot.... 10 

70. The Berber, by W. E. Mayo 20 

71. Silas Marner, by George Eliot.... 10 

72. The Queen of the County 20 

73. Life of Cromwell, by Paxton Hood.. 15 

74. Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte... 20 

75. Child’s History of England, by 

Charles Dickens 20 

76. Molly Bawn, by The Duchess 20 

77. Pillone, by William Bergsoe 15 

78. Phyllis, by the Duchess 2(*-^ i 

79. Romola, by Geor.ge Eliot, Part I... 15 


Romola, by George Eliot, Part II.. 15 


80. Science in Short Chapters 20 

81. Zanoni, by Lord Lytton 20 

82. A Daughter of Heth, by W. Black . 20 

83. The Right and Wrong Uses of the 

Bible, by Rev. R. Heber Newton.20 

84. Night and Morning, by Lord Lytton 

Part 1 15 

Night and Morning, by Lord Lytton 
Part II 15 


.20 

.20 

.10 

10 

10 


LOVELL’S LIBRARY. 


O^T^IiOG-TJB. 


85. Shandon Bells, by William Black. 20 

86. Monica, by The Duchess 10 

87. Heart and Science, by Wilkie Col- 

lins 20 

88. The Golden Calf, by Miss M. E. 

Braddon 20 

89. The Dean’s Daughter, by Mrs. 

Gore 20 

90. Mrs. Geoffrey, by The Duchess,. 20 

91. Pickwick Papers, Part 1 20 

Pickwick Papers, Part II 20 

92. Airy Fairy Lilian, by The Duchess. 20 

93. McLeod of Dare, by Wm. Black. 20 

94. Tempest Tossed, by Tilton, P’tl.20 
Tempest Tossed, by Tilton, P’tII.20 

95. Letters from High Latitudes, by 

Lord Dufferin 20 

96. Gideon Fleyce, by Henry W. Lucy . 20 

97. India and Ceylon, by E. H8eckle..20 

98. The Gypsy Queen, by Hugh De 

Normaud 20 

99. The Admiral’s Ward, by Mrs. 

Alexander 20 

100. Nimport, by E. L. Bynner, P’t I. .15 
Nimport, byE. L. Bynner, P’t II. . 15 

101. Harry Holbrooke, by Sir H. Ran- 

dall Roberts. . 20 

102. Tritons, by E. Lassoter Bynner, 

Part I 15 

Tritons, by E. Lasseter Bynner, 

Part II 15 

103 Let Nothing You Dismay, by Wal- 
ter Besant..- 10 

104. Lady Aud ley’s Secret, by Miss M. 

E. Braddon 20 

105. Woman’s Place To-Day, by Mrs. 

Lillie Devereux Blake 20 

106. Dunallan, by Kennedy, Part I... 15 
nDunallan, by Kennedy, Part II.. 15 

107. /Hou8ekeeping and Home-Making, 

^ by Marion Harland 15 

108. No New Thing, by W. E. Norris.. 20 

109. The SpoopendykePapers, by Stan- 

ley Huntley 20 

110. False Hopes, by Qoldwin Smith. .15 

111. Labor and Capital, by Edward 

Kellogg 20 

112. Wanda, by Ouida, Part 1 15 

W’anda, by Onida, Part II 16 

113. More Words About the Bible, by 

Rev. Jas. S. Bush 20 

li;|^Monsieur Lecoq, byGaboriau.P’t 1.20 
Mon8iearLecoq,byGaboriau,P’t 11.20 

115. An Outline of Irish History, by 

Justin H. McCarthy 10 

116. The Lerouge Case, by Gaboriau..20 

117. Paul Clifford, by Lord Lytton...20 

118. A New Lease of Life, by About. .20 

119. Bourbon Lillies 20 

120. Other Peoples’ Money, by Emile 

Gaboriau 20 

1 21 . The Lady of Lyons, by Lord Lytton . 10 

122. Ameline de Bourg 15 


123, 

124, 


125 

126 


127 


128. 

129. 

130. 

131. 

132. 


133. 


134, 

135, 


136. 

137. 

138. 

139. 

140. 

141. 

142. 


143. 

144. 


145. 


146. 

147. 


148. 

149. 


150. 


151. 

162. 

153. 


164. 

165. 
156. 
158. 


160. 


A Sea Queen, by W. Clark RtiB8ell.20 
The Ladies Lindores, by Mrs. 

Oliphant 20 

Haunted Hearts, by J. P. Simpson. 10 
Loys, Lord Beresford, by The 

Duchess 20 

Under Two Flags, by Ouida, P’t 1.16 
Under Two Flags, by Ouida, P’t 11.15 

Money, by Lord Lytton 10 

In Peril of His Life, by Gaboriau . 20 

India, by Max Muller 20 

Jets and Flashes 20 

Moonshine and Marguerites, by 

The Duchess. 10 

Mr. Scarborough’s Family, by 

Anthony Trollope, Part 1 16 

Mr. Scarborough’s Family, by 

Anthony Trollope, Pait II 16 

Arden, by A. Mary F. Roberts... 15 
The Tower of Percemont, by 

Geerge Sand 20 

Yolande, by Wm. Black 20 

Cruel London, by Joseph Hatton. 20 
The Gilded Clique, by Gaboriau... 20 
Pike County Folks, by E. H. Mott.. 20 
Cricket on the Hearth, byDickens.lO 
Henry Esmond, by Thackeray. . . .20 
Strange Adventures of a Phaeton, 

by ’Wm. Black 20 

Denis Duval, by W. M. Thackeray. 10 
Old Curiosity Shop, by Charles 

Dickens, Part 1 15 

Old Curiosity Shop, by Charles 

Dickens. Part II 15 

Ivanhoe, by Scott, Part 1 15 

Ivanhoe, by Scott, Part 11 16 

W’hite Wings, by Wm. Black 20 

The Sketch Book, by Washington 

Irving 20 

Catherine, by W. M. Thackeray. .10 
Janet’s Repentance, by George 

Eliot 10 

BarnabyRudge, by Chas. Dickens 

Part I 15 

BarnabyRudge, by Chas. Dickens 

Part II 15 

Felix Holt, by George Eliot 20 

Richelieu, by Lord Lytton 10 

Sunrise, by Wm. Black, Part I 1.‘ 

Sunrise, by Wm. Black, Part II. 

Tour of the World in 80 Days,, by 

Jules Verne 

Mysteries of OrcivaJ, by Emile 

Gaboriau 20 

Lovel, The Widower, by W. M. 

'‘Thackeray 10 

David Copperfield, by Charles 

Dickens, Part 1 20 

David Copperfield, by Charles 

Dickens, Part II 20 

Rienzi, by Lord Lytton, Part I ...15 
Rienzi, by Lord Lytton, Part II. . 16 


,15 


.20 




CRUEL LONDON 

/ 





JOSEPH HATTON, 

n ^ 

AUTHOR OF 

"Clytib,” “The Queen of Bohemia,” “The Valley of 

Poppies," Christopher Kenrick,” “In the 

& 

Lap of Fortune," etc. 


NEW YORK: 

JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY, 

14 AND 16 Vesey Street. 


V ; 


> a K o i j 






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,: r/a! ■“ '/IIlOl 

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oiPiijTzonsrs- ^ 


CRUEL LONDON. 


' MOKNING POST. 


“ Nothing so powerful has appeared in fiction since Charles Reade wrote his 
immortal story of ‘ Hard Cash.’ ” 


MAYFAIR. 

“ ‘ Cruel London,’ is a clever, powerful work, of a very diffierent calibre from 

the rank and file of novels So ends a book of which the dialogue is spirited 

and the plot original. We have been quite unable to do justice to its merits, but 
we do not shrink from saying that it is far away the best novel we have read this 
year.” 

SUNDAY TIMES. 

“ In ‘ Cruel London,’ Mr. Hatton has touched a point higher fhanhe has reached 
in any previous novel, and has, indeed, produced a work which in its line may stand 
comparison with anything English prose fiction has for many years produced. Not 
only has he written a singularljr striking and powerful story, he has created living 
and recognisable characters, has interwoven with remarkable skill tljeir adventures, 
and has shaped a book which is at once an interesting psychological study, an elabor- 
ate and ingenious puzzle, and a clever and spirited satire upon modern institutions.” 

PALL MALL GAZETTE. 

“ It abounds in adventure, and is not altogether free from extravagance. There 
are descriptions of persons and things which are graphic and picturesque to the 
verge of poetry.” 

ATHENiEUM. 

“ Both power and pains are exhibited in Mr. Hatton’s new story The 

method of Tom Sleaford’s death is terrible, and told with a skill which actually 
lulls the conscience into some measure of approval of his slayer.” 

DAILY NEWS. 

“ Above all we find here the movement, the quick succession of incidents, the 
diversity of character, and the sustained expectation which,are essential to romance. ” 





NOTICE. 

This work has been dramatized and didy protected as a stage play, by the Authcn'. 


ry 


In 

MY BEST AND OLDEST FRIEND, 

L. H. 



CRUEL LONDON 


BOOK I. 


CHAPTER 1. 

H AK V B S T HOME. 

‘ Jennie, I hare never told you how much I love you 
until to-night.’ 

j^JNpt in words, Uncle Martin, but in deeds, dear, in many 
a kindly act, and in a thousand different ways.” 

The speakers were an o}d weatherbeaten man and a 
young and beautiful woman. They might be typified by 
a gnarled oak and a budding ash ; the one crooked and 
knotted with age, the other soft and tender and full of life’s 
youthful vigor. 

Squire Martin was a rugged, hard-looking man with 
strong, lines’in his face, and bony, nervous hands. 

Jane Crosby was a hearty English girl of three or four 
and twenty, a fresh, happy-looking, well-built woman, with 
brown hair braided close to her head, which was planted 
clean and firm upon a pair of handsome shoulders that 
sloped down and gave graceful contour to her well-developed 
bust. 

There was no nonsense about Miss Crosby. Nature in- 
tended her for a fine woman, and Nature had had her way. 


2 


CRUEL LONDON, 


Beneath Jane’s light cotton gown there was no suspicion of 
stays. She had a soft gray eye, and a firm mouth, with 
just sufficient prominence of lip to indicate love of life, 
generosity, friendship, and all that is genial and good. It 
was a face made for happiness, but full of tender patience ; 
a face that would light up with pleasure or reflect the low- 
c ring clouds of trouble. In short, Jane Crosby was a true 
woman — just such a woman as most men admire, but whom 
the majority of her sex would charge with a want of refine- 
ment ; just such a woman as Mayfair might turn up its 
nose at, and pronounce fat and provincial ; just such a 
woman, howevei', as would turn the heads of the men at a 
Belgravian reception; -though my Lady Fashion insists 
upon declaring slender figures to be the height of beauty. 

Uncle Martin sat by the first fire of the autumn, after 
Harvest Home had been celebrated, with Jane Crosby’s head 
upon his knee. 

Jane liked to nestle by the inglenook on a hassock suffi- 
ciently low lo enable her to caress Shep, the favorite sheep- 
dog, or to lay her head upon Uncle Martin’s knee and look 
alternately into his face or into the fire, where she would 
picture her destiny in a vague, shadowy way, with nothing 
certain in the imaginative story, except the face of John 
Kerman, her uncle’s right hand in the harvest fields, and 
her constant companion. 

“It come over me to tell you to-night, lovey, how my 
poor old heart warms to you. I think it is because this is 
the last harvest I shall gather in, because, lass, I feel that 
it’s my Harvest Home.” 

“ Don’t say that, uncle ; you never looked better, and 
I’m sure you never spoke nicer than you did when the lads 
drank your health, and you thanked them.” 

“ I was looking back, lass, and wishing I’d been kind to 
’em; wishing I hadn’t lost my temper so often ; wishing I 
hadn’t been hard to them, hard and brutal, lass.” 

The old man’s hot tears fell upon the girl’s hand. She 
brushed away her own and looked up at him, smiling like 
the sun through a summer shower. 

“Ko, no, uncle, you have always been good; they have 
never wanted their wage for an hour. When the crops 
failed, and our neighbors discharged their servants, you 
kept men on ; and nobody speaks of you without respect.” 

“ I kept them on ; yes, and I did it with a curse. If I’d 
my time to come over again, and knew what I know now, 


CRUEL LONDON. 


3 

I would be kind as well as just ; kind like thou art, lovey ; 
1^1 try and walk, if it was a long way off, in the footsteps 
of Him who was the kindest gentleman that ever trod the 
earth. It come to me to say this to-night, Jennie, and I am 
not ashamed. I think I’ve been too proud and too shy to be 
kind to people, somehow as if my heart had got crusted 
over, lovey, and couldn’t work rightly.” 

The firelight played lovingly upon the two figures. Sum- 
mer and Winter, Plope and Despair, the Past and the Fu- 
ture, the gnarled oak waiting for the axe, the young asli-plant 
waiting for the sun and rain to fashion it into a tree, tliat 
shall bend gracefully before the wind, and lift its tender, 
loving branches towards the sky. 

The flickering beams wrapped the man and maiden in 
their ruddy embrace, hovering about them, playing in the 
folds of the girl’s dress, turning her brown hair into threads 
of red gold, and softening the rugged lines of the old man’s 
wrinkled face. 

It was a touching picture ; a picture for joy and sorrow; 
a picture to be sad over, a picture to rejoice at; a picture 
of human life, so real that the joy of it was heart-aching. 

It was Life and Death, May and December, the violet 
and the withered leaf, the song of joy, the dirge of despair. 
Spring Leaves and Harvest Home. 

The firelight seemed to know the quality and character 
of the picture, lingering fondly about it, touching gently 
the old man’s face, caressing his hands, and dwelling loving- 
ly upon the brown hair of the head that nestled upon his 
knee. 

“ But I have never been unkind to Jennie,” he continued, 
this time as if answering his thoughts or responding to the 
quiet upbraidings of his conscience. “I don’t remember 
ever saying an angry word to Jennie, and I think I always 
loved my sister, who died when Jennie was born — died a 
widow, bles^ her dear heart, as good a woman as ever 
breathed ; but I’ve been a brute to Jack Kerman. Kay, 
it’s no good saying I haven’t. I have been a brute, just as 
I have to others, for that matter, the Lord forgive me ! I 
think it was because I was' jealous of him, afraid that Jennie 
had got to think too much about him ; afraid some day 
that he might ask me for her, and then I think I could have 
killed him. When I’m gone — when the last load is stacked 
— when we’ve said our last say, and the gleaners are in the 
stubble, then maybe I could bear to think that somebody 


4 


CRUEL LONDON" 


claimed her for his own ; and what’s more, that she had a 
strong arm to lean on when she wanted to be taken care of. 
Where are you, Jennie ? ’’ 

“ Here, uncle dear,” said Jane, rising and putting her 
arms around his neck, while Shep started to his feet to lick 
his hands, and then lie down again once more in the fire- 
light. 

‘‘You love this Kerman,” said the old man, taking her 
hand in his, and looking into her face. “ I think yon 
do, and 1 think he may be a good^- fellow in his way, for 
his father was straight and honest as" daylight, fair-dealing 
and true to his word, and lent me five thousand pounds 
once when I needed it — aye, so much that I’d have broken 
without it ; and to-night I like to tell you all this while 
there’s time to-night when the wheat is all in. But I don’t 
know whether Jack’s his father’s son or his mother’s. He’s 
flighty a bit in his ways, and proud, and thinks he knows 
best, and wants to be a great man, and all that ; but any- 
thing that you look tenderly on, anything that you love, 
must be good, Jennie, though I cannot altogether trust 
him.” 

“ You love me too much to do justice to John, ” said 
Jane Crosby, kissing the old man’s forehead. “He’s al- 
ways been my friend, and kind to me, and always faithful 
to you, uncle dear, always.” 

“ Yes, yes, faithful, yes, that’s something; kind to you’s 
nothing. You might as well say the earth is kind to the 
sun when it lies soddened and the sun smiles on it, and the 
seed gi’ows, and presently the wind bends the tall, filling 
ears of grain. 1 wish I were young again, Jennie. You 
never saw me in my prime, before she was faithless. I was 
once in love, Jennie, and a thief stole her from me — a thief, 
Jennie, a wily thief, and she died abroad — died, and I never 
saw her again ; and I think that made a brute of me, a hard, 
morose man, a money-grubber ; but we’ll not talk of that 
it is so long ago. I sometimes think it is only a dream. 
We will not talk of it. Let the past go. It is the future 
we have to deal with, Jennie — your future, my dear. If 
you were your own mistress to-morrow, Jennie, with broad 
lands, and money in the bank, what would you do ? ” 

“ Whatever you asked me, dear,” said Jennie. 

“ And what would you like me to ask you to do ? Give 
it all to Kerman, and you along with it ? ” 


CRUEL LONDOIL. 


b 

Jennie pressed his hand, and hid her face even from the 
firelight which came prying round her warm and ruddy. 

“ Ah, we are all slaves, Jennie ; slaves to some hidden 
master, who leads us at will. But it is all one at last; 
though. I’d like you to have happy days, Jennie — a life 
without care, with nothing to do but look beautiful, and 
have your heart full of content and pleasure: a good time 
from now all through the long summer of your life, and 
a Harvest Home rich and rare, and full of gathered joys. 
But a man, I’m thinking, does not always like the money 
to be on the woman’s side, Jennie ; it takes his pride out 
of him — it saps his independence, and it sometimes makes 
a man vain and arrogant, instead of submissive and gentle. 
I have seen to it, Jennie ; I have seen to it. Jeremiah 
Sleaford made me a will a year or so back, but I’ve altered 
it. I was wrong in having a secret from my own lawyer, 
Jabez Thompson, and got nearly punished for it; but that’s 
all over now ; and you may trust Jabez. Perhaps he’s a bit 
too fond of horses for a lawyer, though I never knew a 
man who was downright fond of horseflesh that was a bad 
’un. Be wary of Mr. Sleaford ; he calls himself my relation. 
Mayhap he is, I don’t know ; a cousin ten times off, or 
something like that. I hope I’ve saved him from the neces- 
sity of being a rogue, but I don’t know. Only you take 
none of his advice; stick to dear old Jabez. He’s got a 
heart as well as a head. Don’t cry, my darling ; don’t cry. 
When the grain is ripe it must be reaped, and it’s a quiet 
time after harvest ; a time to sit by the fire and think of 
the summer that is gone, and the winter that is coming in. 
You have been my summer, Jennie, and the comfort of my 
harvest home is that I have never said an unkind word to 
you — never, never once.’’ 

Again the hot tears filled the old man’s eyes, and the 
firelight crept about him, mingling its embraces with the 
maiden. 

******* 

And when the night was almost spent, they carried the 
old man out of the firelight into the cold shadow of the 
waning moon. 


G 


CRUEL LONDON 


CHAPTER II. 

THE SLEAPOEDS. 

Jeremiah Sleaford, Esq., of Fitzroy Square, London, 
was one of those phenomena of the English metropolis 
who have practically no profession, no property, no income, 
and yet contrive to live in a semi-fashionable house, in good 
style, and to support a family that goes into society. 

Jeremiah Sleaford was one of those creations of an 
aristocratic system of government that over-estimate the 
necessity of keeping up appearances, and do not sufficiently 
value the old-fashioned principle of being .honestly what 
you are and living your own life. Mr. Sleaford had con- 
tinually discounted the future, and, if he ever condescended 
to argue the point, he would prove by the cleai-est logic 
tliat only on his system could men of brains without money 
hold their own against the brutal tyranny of capital. 

Commencing life in the city of Lincoln as an articled 
clerk to a local solicitor, he had been industrious enough to 
obtain his articles, and had actually commenced to practise 
on liis own account, not in the city of his birth, but in the 
great metropolis, where he had considerably supplemented 
attorneyship with financing, money-lending, and journalism. 

Finally, Mr. Jeremiah Sleaford had studied for the Bar, 
and ill the midst of his dinners he had manned the corner 
house in Fitzroy Square, with five thousand pounds, which 
had practically ruined him : for his sanguine temperament 
had led him into the reckless investment of house and 
money, and had left him with an extravagant son (whom he 
loved with all the strength and weakness of his nature) of 
five and twenty^ two interesting daughters, and a wife a 
little older than himself, all dependent upon his successes as 
a hanger-on of public companies, and a promoter more par- 
ticularly of gold and silver mines, in which he had sunk 
name, fame, and cash. 


CRUEL LONDON-. 


7 


it, some friends in the city who had escaped the financial 
whirlwind bought the contents of the corner house in Fitz- 
roy Square, and settled the family goods upon Mrs. Slea- 
ford, ^s hard and fast as the house itself, so that Jeremiali 
with his bald head, and his bushy whiskers, could not throw 
the fine old house into a gold mine, even if he had found it 
difficult to keep the fine old house going in the way of 
butcher’s meat and servants. 

Two years prior to his death. Uncle Martin had sent for 
Sleaford to make his will. 

He did not, he said, want any of the Lincolnshire folk 
to know how he had left his property. Local solicitors 
were too fond of leaving their papers about, and their clerks 
cackled and let out secrets. So he had bethought him of 
his old friend and distant relation, Mr. Jeremiah Sleaford, 
and after some trouble had found him out, and brought him 
down from London, without any one being the wiser ; for 
Uncle Martin had met him at the White Horse Hotel, in the 
old city, and had then and there instructed him. 

Mr. Sleaford had brought down the papers; and Uncle 
Martin had executed the will in the presence of his banker 
and Mr. Sleaford’s clerk ; and the document had been there 
and then sealed, and deposited at the county bank. 

The London attorney had protested that he \vould rather 
the will had been prepared by a stranger, inasmuch as Mr. 
Martin had left him three thousand pounds ; but the old 
farmer had smiled, and said that was nothing; and the 
banker did not think Mr. Sleaford need have the slightest 
scruple when he compared that small sum with the large 
property bequeathed to others. 

Two years had parsed away, and the business was only 
significant, Sleaford would say, when the matter Avas men- 
tioned, from the fact that it was almost his last purely pro- 
fessional act in the law, though the will had a not uninfiu- 
cntial clause or two in reference to the house of Sleaford. 
Beyond this he would not speak of the contents of Squire 
Martin’s last testamentary commands. They represented 
the Lincolnshire farmer’s secret. “ The time would come,” 
he would say, with an air of mystery that irritated Mrs. 
Sleaford to madness. But the financier was firm in the 
mamtenancc of £is secret — the only thing in which he really 
was firm. Squire Martin had serit to London for a solicitor 
on the ground of secrecy; and, though that attorney had 
practically retired from practice, he nevertheless had not 


8 


CRUEL LONDON, 


c^iven up the habit of respecting the confidences of those 
Jew men who, until they were dead, might still be regarded 
as liis clients. 

If you had seen Sleaford go out in a morning to the 
City, you might hare mistaken him for the happiest and 
most prosperous of men. He was a round-faced, florid com- 
))lexioned, beaming gentleman, with a smile upon his lips, 
and a sentiment always bubbling lip to them. 

He wore scrupulously clean linen, a black velvet waist- 
coat, and tie showing a set of diamond studs, gray trousers, 
a black frock coat, a hat with a band round it, because hat- 
bands have a sympathetic appearance, and he carried a gold- 
headed cane. 

He was fifty years of age ; he looked forty, and walked 
with the jaunty air of a youth. 

He could never forget tliat he once owned a hundred 
thousand pounds, and was chairman of the Kamtschatka 
Gold Mining Company, Limited. 

It is true the hundred thousand pounds were in the scrip 
of that company, and that they had been reckoned at half-a- 
crown a share by the official liquidator. 

Still, Mr. Seaforth only remembered his wealth as it was 
originally set down ; and he would tell you how during the 
panic he had lost hundreds of thousands of pounds, and 
that he never expected to be as rich again as he had been, 
but, nevertheless, that he would not complain ; no, he would 
not complain ; and he had some schemes in hand which 
must turn out well, and which positively might even retrieve 
all his lost fortunes. 

It was a pleasant sight, as I said l^fore, to see Mr. Jer- 
emiah Sleaford start for the city. Hi^faded wife, with her 
curls and black laCe mittens, would kiss his wide and manly 
forehead ; Patty and Emily would kiss his dear, whiskered 
cheeks ; Tom would say, “ By by, gov. ; shall see you in 
the city ; ” and Tim Malony, the man-of-all-work, who had 
been with the family all through the panic and since, would 
brush his hat, and turn him out into the street with admir- 
ing words, that would have been resented as too familiar if 
Tim had not been a faithful servant, not to say a useful 
ally ; for the servant was somewhat of the master’s nature, 
and had in him a spirit of brag and adventure which linked 
the two together in a bond of sympathy, which Jeremiah 
Sleaford, Esq., was always ready to acknowledge in a pat- 
ronizing kind of way that was eminently satisfactory to 


CRUEL LONDOl^. 


n 


Tim’s sense of humor, and did not in any way outrao;e his 
national pride. In his own heart Tim believed his master to 
be a rogue, but that opinion was a secret which Tim held a? 
dear as his life ; for he was himself but indifferently honest, 
and he had a sympathetic admiration for Jeremiah Slea- 
ford, Esquire. 

“ Tim,” said the master, on a dull, foggy morning, two 
days after the death of the famous Lincolnshire farmer, 
“ Tim, when a man dies his secret is out; at least the one 
in question is no longer a secret, and I commit no breach, 
Tim, now, in saying that the fickle goddess of fortune has 
a really good thing in store for us at last.” 

“ Indade, and heaven send it betirne,” said Tim, brushing 
his master’s hat while they stood in the hall of the family 
residence. “ Be jabers, an’ I thought there was bad news, 
as the missus and the girls haven’t come out to kiss yer 
honor on the step.” 

“ Grief, Tim, the natural grief of tender hearts. It’s a 
death in the family, Tim, a death,” said the master. 

“ A death, is it ? A death with money in it ; and I’d 
loike to attind the wake if the body’s left ye a furtune,” 
said Tim, giving the finishing touch to the shining hat, which 
his master looked Into solemnly, and then pressed gently 
upon his white and shining brow. 

“ There will be no wake, Tim, but there will be a funeral, 
and you shall accompany Mr. Tom Sleaford and myself to 
that solemn ceremony.” 

“ Ah, by my sowl, and I’ll accompany you to the devil if 
ye ax me ; and it’s a joy to know that at least the hatband 
ye’ve had such a fancy for will be a genuine bit of furniture 
after all ; and if there’s money in the funeral, be jabers I’d 
liave a hatband to the top of my hat, like old Flippers, the 
baker, when Lord Timbuctoo, his forty-ninth cousin, died 
and didn’t even mention his name in the will.” 

“ Don’t damp the legitimate hopes of an honest man by 
such unhappy reference to the weaknesses and misfortunes 
of others, Tim,” said Jeremiah the Magnificent; “but con- 
sult your mistress as to the course to be pursued in regard 
to the funeral of our relative. Squire Martin, and say that 
I think Smith Brothers, of Regent Street, the famous mer- 
cers in black, will be only too happy to open a quarterly 
account with her, especially on so auspicious — I mean on so 
melancholy an occasion.” . 

“ I will, yer honor. Good-morning, sir,” said Tim, as he 


10 


CRUEL LONDON. 


closed the door, with an air of demonstrative respect, upon 
the gentleman who was off to the city, and upon the fog 
that was not off anywhere, but had made up its mind to be 
on hand all day in city and suburb. 

The dining-room of No. 1, Fitzroy Square, served as 
breakfast, dining, and drawing-room for the Sleafords ex- 
cept on company days, and once a month, when Mrs. Slea- 
ford was “ at home.” 

On this memorable morning in question, Mrs Sleaford, 
the two girls and Tom, took counsel together over the fire, 
wliile Tim removed the breakfast things. 

Tom was strongly of opinion that, if old Martin had 
left them anything, his death would have been announced 
to them by some member of the family. And what did the 
governor mean by saying that one member of the Sleaford 
family in particular would be glad ? Mrs. Sleaford really 
did not know what the relationship was. She had never 
heard Jeremiah talk of Squire Martin as his cousin before, 
except on one occasion when the poet Tennyson was men- 
tioned ; he said he liad distant relations in the county which 
gave the laureate birth. Patty and Emily thought it would 
be a pleasant change to go into mourning, especially just as 
the winter was coming on. 

“But how is it to be paid for ? ” asked Mrs. Sleaford, 
looking round upon her thoughtless family. 

“ Oh, the master’s arranged that,” said the privileged 
servant, Tim, as he was carrying off the last article of do- 
mestic econotny connected with the recent repast. 

“ Has he ? ” said Mrs. Sleaford, interrogatively. 

“ The great mourning-house of Smith Brothers will open 
an account,” said Tim; “ and if you’ll go there at once. I’ll 
attend ye, ma’am : and it will be best to have a brougham, 
and I’ll be sitting on the box to give importance to the 
event, anyhow.” 

“Very well, Tim,” said Mrs. Sleaford; “fetch the 
brougham in an hour, and Miss Emily and myself will be 
ready.” 

“ Thank ye, ma’am,” said Tim, as respectfully as if he had 
received his wages regularly, and had no knowledge what- 
ever of the impecuniosity of the family, to whom he had 
become an absolute necessity. 

“Tim’s almost as clever as the governor,” said Mr. Slea- 
ford, jun, toasting his slippered toes on the fender. 

“I wish he were not so familiar,” said Patty, a young 


CRUEL LONDON. 


11 


lady of eighteen, with blue eyes and a delicately fair com- 
.plexion. 

Patty, to all appearance, was a pale pinky nonentity, who 
spent her life in copying water-color studies of impossible 
sunsets. 

Her sister Emily had all the brain of the family, and 
most of its good looks, too-. She was three years older than 
Patty, and twenty shades darker : slight in figure, hazel eyes, 
dark-brown hair, and a touch of obstinacy in her moral com- 
2:>osition. That was indicated in a well-shaped, dedicate 
mouth, and a firm, steady eye. She was not pretty, but she 
was certainly interesting, and she nursed in secret something 
like a contempt for father, mother, brother, and sister, and 
tliat was the one great trouble of her life. 

“ Tim has the privilege of an old and tried servant,” said 
Mrs. Sleaford, *who noticed a not altogether complimentary 
expression in Emily’s face in reference to Tom’s remark. 

“ The privilege of a fellow-conspirator,” said Emily, not 
angrily, but with something like a sneer. 

“ Emily, why will you make yourself so disagreeable ? ” 
said Mrs. Sleaford. V You ignore the little fictions of life, 
as if they were not a necessary part of one’s existence, and 
you despise what is equally important, a reasonable amount 
of keeping up appearances. I can’t think where you get 
your absurd notions from.” 

“ What is the good, mamma, of going into debt for this 
mourning ; you will only be worried to death for the money, 
and father and Tim will have to lie against each other to 
the man who, six months from now, will come every day 
for weeks to serve father with a writ,” said Emily, placing 
upon a file several accounts which had come by post. 

“ You are so disgustingly prosaic, and you have no hope 
in the future,” said Mr. Sleaford, jun. 

“ I am the domestic bookkeeper ; I know how much we 
owe, and how little we can pay, and I am wearied of a 
hollow pretence of prosperity which brings its daily humili- 
ations.” 

“ What do you mean ? ” asked Mrs. Sleaford, in a tone 
a little higher and quicker than her customary drawl. 

“ I mean exactly what I say, mamma. The butcher has 
threatened to stop supplies ; the gas-man told Tim he would 
cut o:ff the gas to-morrow if the last half-year’s account is 
not paid to-day : the reginiental tailor of Captain Tom Slea- 
ford, of the Tower Hamlets Volunteers, have served 


12 


CRUEL LOUDON. 


papa with a County Court summons : and now you are 
going to prepare a greater worry than all to succeed these 
troubles, when we have got through them, as I suppose we 
shall, with the usual noise and fluster, like a cat getting 
through a skylight.” 

Emily hung the file in a corner of a bureau devoted to the 
financial affairs of the household, locking it with a smart click, 
and was about to continue her remarks, when Tom Sleaford 
looked up from the Tiynes^ which was borrowed for an hour 
for a penny every morning, and asked what Emily was 
“ rowing about.” 

“ I am not ‘ rowing,’ ” said Emily. 

“Yes, you are,” said Patty, with her white, doughy arm 
round her mother’s waist, for Mrs. Sleaford had begun to 
cry. 

“ Now look here, Em, I won’t have it,” said Tom. “ This 
would be the happiest family going if you didn’t always 
break in on its peace with your matter-of-fact saws and 
maxims.” 

“ Peace,” said Emily, “ may be too dearly bought ; we 
have had enough of what you call peace, which simply 
means letting things drift into a war, to be fought at a dis- 
advantage when the time comes.” 

“ Go it, Em ; but don’t expect me to stop and hear you. 
Fred Tavener may like that kind of amusement ; I don’t, 
so I’m off,” said Tom, proceeding to pull on his boots. 

“ There is no need to say anything against Mr. Tavener,” 
said Mrs. Sleaford, languidly ; “ he is a very kind and gentle- 
man-like person.” 

“ I’ve nothing to say against him.” 

“ When you have, Tom, say it to his face,” said Emily. 
“ He is not particularly clever, but he dpes work hard, 
Tom, and ” 

“ I don’t, I suppose you mean ; all right, Em, I’m going 
to be a schemer, like the governor. Work’s a mistake; 
wit’s the thing, Em, wit.” 

“ Then I’m sorry for you, Tom,” said Emily. 

“Thank you,” replied Tom, drawing himself up. 

“ There, "don’t be angry,” said the girl, quickly, and put- 
ting her arms round his neck ; “ it is not your fault if you 
are an idle, good-for-nothing fellow.” 

“ Shan’t make it up; you’re always going on at a chap,” 
said Tom ; “luckily Fitzroy Square isn’t the only corner in 


CRUEL LONDON. 


13 


the world, and I know half-a-dozen places where they don’t 
tell me I’m a brute, and then try to make things straight 
by pretending they mean it kindly.” 


CHAPTER III. 

GOING INTO MOURNING. 

Tom walked out of the room, and presently the hall-door 
banged, and his tall figure, with its light moustache and its 
brown ulster coat, could be seen stalking past the window 
and disappearing in the fog. 

“It is really unkind,” said Mrs. Sleaford; “very un- 
kind, to send the dear boy out to walk about the streets of 
London on a day like this.” 

“ Just because Emily can’t control her temper,” remarked 
Patty, in a calm aside. 

“ 1 was not out of temper,” said Emily ; “and that idea 
of walking the streets of London is too absurd. Wliy, 
Tom has a dozen places to go to. Men are never at a loss 
— bars, clubs, billiard-rooms — there is no end to the seduc- 
tive amusements that make it easy for Tom to resent the 
slightest discomfort at home, and pretend he is driven out.” 

Emily was quite right. Tom’s life outside Fitzroy 
Square was to him full of pleasant incidents. 

He knew four barmaids by their Christian names. They 
always put themselves out of the way to humor his whims. 
The best of everything was at his command at four of the 
finest bars in London. 'Not that he traded upon the com- 
])laisance of these pleasant ladies. He paid his score. 
Some men who condescend to, captivate the Bacchanalian 
graces forget to pay for their drinks. At present Tom was 
not quite a sneak ; he was only vain and idle, but he only 
wanted the opportunity to be a villain. 

“ Walking about the streets of London, mother ! — why, 
Tom has a club on Adelphi Terrace far better furnished 
than his club in Eitzroy Square.” 

“ What club in Fitzroy Square? ” 

“ This house : home is only a club to Tom. I wish I 
could take things as coolly.” 


14 


CRUEL LONDON-. 


“ Emily hears all about these things from Mr. Tavener,” 
said Patty. 

“Kever mind how Emily hears, dear; Emily knows, 
that Tom has a club where he can eat and drink , and 
smoke and order the servants about : where he meets other 
Toms, who talk over the scandals of the day, and enjoy 
themselves to their hearts’ content. Talk of women ! 
why men are as frivolous and as full of gossip and scandal 
as the tabbies at a West-End kettledrum.” 

“ Oh, you spiteful thing ! ” said Patty, looking up out 
of her doll’s eyes, and rubbing them the moment Emily 
looked towards her. 

Mrs, Sleaford burst into tears. 

“ Why, mother ! why, mother ! ” exclaimed Emily. 

“Why, what?” murmured Mrs. Sleaford. 

“ Why are you crying ? ” 

“ Because you are quarrelling.” 

“We are not doing anything of the kind, dear,” said 
Emily. 

“ ISTo,” said Patty, “ we are not.” 

“ I don’t like to hear you say things against Tom.” 
Mrs. Sleafoi^ dried her eyes as she spoke. 

“ I only speak for his own good. I wish he would do 
something,” said Emily, leaving the room. 

Tom had been unlucky. His father had obtained ap- 
pointments for him in several City houses. He had been 
unable to keep them, because his pride would not endure 
the demands which mercantile rules made upon it ; and in 
one financial house he had been charged with trading in 
scrip on the strength of information, the secret of which lie 
was bound in honor, as an official of the establishment, to 
maintain and respect. The dear boy was now waiting for 
the development of a company of which he was to be ap- 
pointed manager : and as his father would be chairman of 
the board, his duties would be such as a gentleman could 
perform. 

Mrs. Sleaford had talked this matter over with Emily 
only the day before, and had begged her not to wound poor 
Tom’s feelings by references to his being out of a lucrative 
position ; and Mrs. Sleaford felt that her taunts were, there- 
fore, doubly hard, and more particularlywhen they were all 
doing their best to keep up a respectable appearance, so that 
when good fortune really did come back again they would 


CRUEL LONDON, 15 

be in a position to receive it, and hold their own in society 
as they always had done. 

“ Yes, dear mamma,” said Patty ; “ don’t cry any more ; 
it is very naughty of Emily, but she’s only in one of her 
tempers, and it will soon be all over, and you know what a 
dear girl she is when she’s not put out.” 

“ I’m sure I wish she would marry.” 

“ So do I.” 

“ Some rich man.” 

“Yes.” 

“ Not Mr. Fred Tavener ! ” 

“ No, because he’s poor. That’s the reason Emmy’s 
cross, I think.” 

“ He’s a very nice young man, if he were only well off.” 

“ But what should we do without Emmy ? ” 

“ I don’t know. We shouldn’t have these continual 
scenes, at all events.* 

“We should have nothing, I fear, mamma.” 

“ The carriage will be ready in ten minutes,” said Tim, 
entering the room in his neat livery of chocolate and gold, 
and retiring without waiting for a reply. 

“Go, dear, and ask Emily if she will come with me, or 
leave me to give the order myself. She knows how ignorant 
I am about the quality of things, and how easily I am im- 
posed upon,” said Mrs. Sleaford, wiping her eyes, and kiss- 
ing her youngest born. 

“ I will make her go,” replied Patty, in her slow, unim- 
passioned manner ; and, sure enough, she returned with the 
good news that Emily would be ready in ten minutes. 

A brougham drove up to the door. Tim was on the box 
in his livery. His gloves were white, and his eye was full 
of sly mourning. He had already spoken of the sad news 
which had come by post. The driver, while the horse 
was being put in, had reported to the owner that Mr. Slea- 
ford had been left twenty thousand pounds by a distant 
relative. 

Tim stepped down and opened the door for his mistress 
and her eldest daughter. 

“ An’ it’s sorry I am this day,” he said, in a respectful 
whisper, as he turned the handle of the brougham and 
touched his hat with an air of solemnity that made Miss 
Emily Sleaford laugh. 

“ Really, Emily, if you did not know Uncle Martin, his 
death need not make you merry.” 


16 


CRUEL LONDON. 


'‘No, mamma; it is Tim who makes me merry/’ 

. “ Then I would try and discover a more refined object 
for mirth.” 

“ There is no fun in refinement, mamma.” 

“ You are tlie strangest girl ! ” said Mrs. Sleaford. “ I 
sometimes wonder whether you are my daughter or not.” 

“ Yes, you have a curious choice of subjects to wonder 
about, dear, silly mamma. Don’t you wonder how we are 
going to get Smith Brothers to trust us with all this mourn- 
ing which you are going to order ? ” 

“ No, because you are with me. If I were alone, tliat 
would be a different matter.” 

“ Then let me go home, dear.” 

“ No, you have taken everybody and everything into 
your hands to manage, Emily; and I liave got to rely on 
you so much that I declare I feel quite foolish by myself, 
and I’m sure you wouldn’t like the material I should select 
for )^ou.” 

“Ah, well, here we are, dear. I’d just as soon be a for- 
lorn hope facing a battery of guns as tell tliat w'retched 
shopwalker to book our order,” said Miss Sleaford. 

As if Tim had heard the remark he came to the door, 
and, looking knowingly at her, said, — 

“ Excuse me a minnit, mem. I’ll pave the way for ye, 
and make things as smooth as a greased rainbow. Please 
to wait till I comeback to ye.” 

Tim entered the imposing warehouse of Messrs. Smith 
Brothers, and returned beaming. 

“ Faith, and ye’ll forgive me, Miss Emmy. I just whis* 
pered in the long ear of that baste as walks about the shop 
that I’d expect a good tip for bringing of you to give them 
an order, seeing as your uncle, the great squire, had died 
an’ left ye half a county, and a fortune in goold as was too 
big to count ; an’, be jabers, he said I should be paid ’and- 
sornely.” 

Presently Mrs. Sleaford and her daughter were sitting in 
the most solemn of the heavy mourning departments of 
Smith Brothers, whose assistants waited on them with bated 
breath and whispering humbleness. 


I 


CRUEL LONDON-. 


17 


CHAPTER IV. 

SCHEMES AND SCHEMEES 

Meanwhile the head of the house of Sleaford had 
reached the scene of his business hopes, the offices of the 
Financial Society, which occupied a suite of three rooms on 
the third floor back of a palatial building in Birchin Lane, 
the company consisting of Mr Maclosky Jones and his two 
clerks. 

The most imposing room of the three was the waiting 
room, which was hung with maps of estates, plans of col- 
lieries, sketches of mining-shafts, and a fancy picture of a 
proposed cemetery in the neighborhood of Blackheath, to- 
gether with a still more florid picture of an aquarium and 
concert-rooms on the Thames, at Richmond. 

On the marble mantelpiece were sundry specimens of 
lead, gold, and silver ore, and in a recess near the window, 
was a handsome desk, at which a clerk sat addressing en- 
velopes. 

This anteroom was the rendezvous of Mr. Maclosky 
Jones’s friends and hangers-on, and here came every day 
Mr. Jeremiah Sleaford, one of his most influential confeder- 
ates in the art of promotion. 

Mr. Sleaford was always received with great respect by 
the humble clerk of the outer room, and with equal consid- 
eration by Mr. Fitzherbert Robinson, a gentleman of dis- 
tinguished manners, and with friendly cordiality by the 
other city gentlemen who formed the flnancial circle that 
revolved upon the managerial axis of Maclosky Jones. 

These lights of the outer room were always talking of 
mines, foreign loans, and industrial enterprises in a large 
and magnificent way; an:l though they could not some- 
times have mustered a sufficient sum of money among them 
to pay a cab fare to the West End, yet they spoke of hun- 
dreds of thousands of pounds with an air of confidence that 
might have led a stranger to suppose them to be all million- 
aires, and in the thick of the world’s business. 

Mr. Fitzherbert Robinson was a gentleman of peculiarly 
varied experience. He had been twice married, and once 


CRUEL LONDON, 


18 

divorced, his last wife having been the third daughter of 
an Irish earl. 

It was understood that he had run through two for- 
tunes ; and this must have been true, because he continu- 
ally spoke of the occurrence. 

He had intimate relationship with the Press, and had, 
indeed, for years past, been the most anonymous of the 
leader-writers in the Times — so he said. 

He was a calm, self-possessed gentleman of five and thirty, 
well dressed, well shaved, and well buttoned up. You 
might have mistaken him for a military officer in undress, 
his scrupulously brushed frock-coat was so tightly buttoned, 
and his slight black moustache was so neatly cut and waxed. 

One of those daring weekly journals which had recently 
sprung up in the City had called him a guinea-pig director, 
and a swindler, in an article on the Persian Gold Mining 
Company’s prospectus, and had charged him with being 
the life and soul of the Financial Society, which had at- 
tempted to palm off upon the public for one hundred thou- 
sand pounds property not worth five ; but Mr. Jones Mac- 
losky, the manager of the Syndicate, had written and de- 
nied all knowledge of Mr. Fitzherbert Robinson until he 
was introduced to him in connection with the scheme in 
question ; and Mr. Fitzherbert Robinson had served the 
journal in question with a writ for libel, which he intended 
to carry no further ; and so the financial critic had not done 
the damage he hoped to do, although the Persian scheme 
had fallen dead, and left Mr. Jeremiah Sleaford and his 
anteroom friends jointly responsible for a large advertising 
and printing bill. 

“ Let us hope we shall have more success with the graver 
scheme,” said Robinson, between the whiffs of a cigarette, 
on this particular day 

“The public must die,” rejoined Sleaford, “the public 
must be buried, and a cemetery at Blackheath should be in- 
deed a go ; and I think it will, I think it will.” 

“We have got the concession of the land, and we are 
assured of Parliamentary sanction; we have secured a 
young gentleman who has consented to pay five hundred 
pounds towards preliminary expenses on being guaranteed 
the secretaryship ; and to-day we are to have an interview 
with a gentleman from Paddington, whom we propose to 
appoint our mural sculptor, and gravedigger-in-chief. It is 
through his infiuence that we have obtained the concession 


CRUEL LOA’DOiV, 


19 


of land, and he will agree to give the company a share in 
the profits of his contracts.” 

At this moment, there arrived the very person of whom 
they were speaking, Mr. Harry Brayford, a hearty, genial 
looking fellow, of middle-age, with a pair of mutton-chop 
whiskers, a pair of ruddy cheeks, and a smack of country 
life in his manner, toned down by a black suit of clothes, 
and a pair of black kid gloves, very thick, and much too 
long. 

“ Mr. Brayford, I am glad to see you,” said Robinson ; 
“ allow me to introduce you to my friend, and your friend 
I hope from this day, Mr. Jeremiah Sleaford, of Fitzroy 
Square.” 

“ Good morning, sir,” said Brayford, a little disconcerted 
at finding himself in the presence of so stately a personage 
as J eremiah, who gave him a solemn and dignified recogni- 
tion. 

“ I will go and see if Mr. Maclosky Jones will be long 
before he is disengaged,” said Robinson, and he disappeared ‘ 
behind the green baize door that led to the shrewd Mac- 
losky’s room, where the shrewd Maclosky had been engaged 
for at least two hours, five deep, as the outer clerk said but 
really with no other companions than the morning papers, 
which he was reading in a quiet, leisurely way. 

“ Yours is a somewhat melancholy profession, Mr. Bray- 
ford,” said Sleaford, wdieii he was left alone with the new- 
comer, and the humble clerk who addressed envelopes, and 
who enjoyed the elevated style of Sleaford’s conversation, 
“ though I suppose we can get used to death, and, indeed, 
may come, so to speak, to take a friendly interest in the 
‘ all conquering monarch,’ as. he has been not inaptly 
termed.” 

“ Yes, I suppose so,” said Mr. Brayford, good-humoredly. 
“ Death is a larky cove sometimes — beg pardon, I was 
thinking of something else — I mean, certainly, by all 
means.” 

“ 1 gather by your manner that custom is really second 
nature, and that success in any profession depends on taking 
to it in earnest.”* 

“ Success depends on plenty of rehearsals,” said Bray- 
ford. “ I mean in attention to your business, with punctu- 
ality and despatch, and upon the refined character of your 
epitaphs. Did you ever Write an epitaph, Mr. Sleaford?” 

“ Hever, sir, though I may say that 1 have contributed 


20 


CRUEL LONDON. 


with more or less success to the literature of my country, 
and added not a little to the development of a true appre- 
ciation of gold, from a metallic, moral, natural, and financial 
point of view.” 

“ Yes, no doubt,” said Mr. Brayford ; “ I have not done 
anything in that line, though I do dabble a little. Not to 
speak of that, but to keep to the business in hand, I think 
epitaphography is a great art. I have been insisting lately 
on mingling modern poetry with Biblical lore. Now, sir, I 
think a three-act epitaph — as I call it — is the most success- 
ful of all.” 

Mr. Jeremiah Sleaford looked surprised, and nodded en- 
couragingly to Brayford. 

“That’s my patent — my own idea — a three act epitaph ; 
what I mean is, that it should be on this principle — three 
ideas in prose or rhyme — and I call the first a sigh, the sec- 
ond a tear, the third a sob. That’s reducing the thing to a 
science, and what I tell all my customers, whether I write the 
epitaph or not, is, let there be a sigh, a tear, and a sob in it, 
^nd you’ll bring the curtain down with a round — no, that’s 
not exactly what I mean, but the sob is the idea to conclude 
with.” 

Mr. Brayford’s face grew red with the excitement of this 
professional conversation, and he smiled blandly upon Mr. 
Sleaford, who looked more puzzled than before, not only 
because he was a little at sea owing to Mr. Brayford’s mixed 
metaphors, but furthermore on account of this quiet-looking, 
country mannered gentleman taking the entire conversation 
into his own hands. 

“ To come to business, Mr. Brayford. You are, perhaps, 
not aware that I am to be chairman of this Cemetery Com- 
pany. Pardon me, sir, don’t interrupt me for a moment.” 
(Brayford was just going to dash in and carry off the con- 
versation again.) “ I am glad to have met you, and there is 
a peculiar appropriateness in the encounter, for only this 
morning I was made acquainted with the death of a relative 
of mine in Lincolnshire.” 

“ What part of the county, may I ask ? ” 

Mr. Brayford was a Lincolnshire man, and could not re- 
sist this interruption. 

“ The Marsh,” said Mr. Sleaford. 

“ Pardon me again,” rejoined Brayford, rising from his 
seat ; “ the name ? ” 

“ Squire Martin.” said Sleaford. 


CRUEL LONDON. 


‘21 

“ Good gracious ! you don’t say so,” said Bray ford, his 
face positively beaming ; “ why, I knew him, sir, well when 
I was a boy — used to go down there with my father to 
shoot snipe ; and my father hoped to have buried him, but 
no such luck. Fact is, I have only recently come into the 
mural and cemetery business; my father was in it, I was 
not ; but the dear old boy, after burying all his friends, had 
to be buried himself at last, and I was his heir, do you see, 
and he was proud of his profession, and he bound me to 
carry it on ; so here I am, or here we are again, to quote a 
familiar line. Well, dear me, dear me ; and I suppose Miss 
Crosby, his niece, will come in for the chink, and she’ll marry 
John Kerman, and — well, bless me, this is news — this is 
news ! They’ll bury him at the old church in the Marsh. It’s 
not been in the Times'’ 

“ Was in this morning’s paper,” said Sleaford, now more 
surprised than ever. 

“ Then the Wonner missed it; that’s a shilling off your 
pocket money, old hawk-eye, and no pit ticket for the pan- 
tomime. Mr. W. is my chief clerk, does nothing but exam- 
ine the obituary notices and circularize. A pretty Wonner 
to have missed Squire Martin ! The proverb is indeed true, 
that one goes from home to hear news. I’ll make an ex- 
ample of you this once. Excuse me, sir ” (addressing the 
humble clerk), “ have you any telegraph forms ? ” 

“Yes sir,” said the youth, delighted to get down from 
the desk. “ Here y’are, sir.” 

“I hope you’ll pardon this little wait, sir,” said Mr. 
Brayford, adding in a whisper to himself, “ Interval of five 
minutes for refreshment,” and rapidly writing a telegram 
to Manor Farm, stating that he ’would arrive there by mail 
train, hoping to be honored with instructions to carry out 
the last mournful offices for his late father’s late friend. 

“ You will pardon me, Mr. Brayford, when I venture to 
observe that you are a most singular person ; I had quite 
expected to find a gentleman in your profession imbued with 
its gloom, touched with its woe, enduring with a sigh its sad 
surroundings ; but I suppose it may be in your case as Watts 
so tenderly puts it — 

“ ‘ Not seldom is the squl depressed 
While tearless is the eye ; 

For there are woes that wring the breast 
When feelings, fount is dry.” 




CRUEL LONDON, 


We are continually learning in this world, and I am really 
delighted to be made acquainted, through you, with another 
phase of industrial society ; and the more so that you were 
acquainted with my dear and esteemed relative, the great 
landowner of Lincolnshire.” 

Mr. Brayford was just calling Jeremiah Sleaford, Esquire, 
an old fool under his breath, as a prelude to some flattering 
remark aloud, when Maclosky’s i^rivate secretary announced 
that Mr. Maclosky Jones was now disengaged, and would 
like to see Mr. Sleaford and Mr. Brayford ; whereupon these 
two gentlemen, after the usual courtesy of offering to each 
the precedence, entered the private room of the Financial 
Society, Mr. Brayford bringing up the rear, and executing, 
to the utter amazement of the humble clerk outside, the last 
steps of a fandango so lightly that he did not attract the 
attention of Sleaford, or the inner clerk, who entered the 
financial sanctum with more than usual solemnity. 


CHAPTER V. 

ASHES TO ASHES.” 

^ Autumn lay low on the Lincolnshire marshes. The 
mists of October paraded in ghost-like battalions to the sea. 
There was no wind, though the sedges in the dykes mur- 
mured to each other in saddened whispers. Autumn 
brooded over the broad flats, and all the land was sad and 
silent. 

That sombre procession, winding through the reeking 
landscape to the old church between the Manor Farm and 
Skegnes, might have been set down as part of the season’s 
tokens of decay and death. 

It was a funeral — a black, unpicturesque funeral — at 
which the mourners walked ; and the least interested of 
the bodies present rested under a pall on the shoulders of 
six stalwart yeomen. 

The single bell in the square church tower, which, in the 
old days, had, with the now disused lantern, served as a 
warning and a beacon to mariners on the German Ocean, 
sobbed aloud. Presently the mists of autumn solemnly 


CRUEL LONDON. 


28 


took possession of the funereal cavalcade, and it disappeared 
in the distance ; but the bell still tolled on in dull, mournful 
tones that could be heard at Manor Farm, where the baked 
meats already awaited the return of the procession, when 
it had finished burying old Squire Martin, the hardest, 
shrewdest, most tyrannical and best respected farmer 
between Lincoln and the coast. 

It is a blessing that they built good, solid houses in the 
sombre flats of Lincolnshire ; square, flat, broad-spreading 
houses, with thick walls and great wide fireplaces. It is a 
joy and a blessing on autumn days and winter nights to see 
the fire blaze and hear it crackle on the broad hearthstone ; 
to see the red light fall upon the old oak settle in the 
inglenook ; to see the glare rest upon shining dish-covers, 
upon brass saucepans, upon the polished clock case, upon 
the white scrubbed deal dresser, and upon the blinking 
sheep-dog that dozes by the fender. Autumn may sigh 
without ; winter may beat against the windows ; but there 
is a summer of comfort in the old kitchen of the Manor 
Farm, which defies wind and weather ; and the odor of the 
wood logs, as they crackle and smoulder in the grate, is 
equal to the perfume of ‘ Araby the blest.” 

Manor Farm was a wide old straggling house, built of 
stone, and thatched as closely and as well as the great 
wheat stacks that towered up over the farm-buildings close 
by. Manor Farm did not appear to be affected in any way 
by the dark autumn weather. Indeed, Manor Farm looked 
more cheerful than usual. The blinds were all dr^wn up ; 
some of the bedroom windows were open, and in the dark- 
ness of the autumn twilight the fire could be seen flashing 
beneath the kitchen door. Inside they were preparing a 
feast. Mrs. Kester, the housekeeper, had not been so busy 
for years as she was on this day, when our history com- 
mences. Old Goff, the shepherd, who had grown gray in 
Squire Martin’s service, sat by the fire in speechless wonder 
at Mrs. Kester’s activity. 

“ Come, bustle about, lad,” she said, as she placed de- 
canters of port and sherry on the great white dresser, 
among sirloins of beef and fat hams, “ thou’s done nowt this 
momin’ but sit there and mope.” 

“ It’s the grief, Kester, the grief,” said Goff, looking into 
the fire, and shading his eyes from the glare with a broad, 
bony, wrinkled hand. 

“ More like it’s the drink,” said Kester, turning her hard 


24 


CRUEL LONDON. 


face upon him with a cynical expression about the mouth 
and a look of pity in the eyes. Kester was noted for her 
sharp sayings and her kind heart. 

“No, it -ain’t that/’ said Goff, reflectively, as if answering 
his own thoughts rather than the sour remark of Kester, 
whom he had seen daily since she came there a child to 
help in the dairy, and whose cutting tongue had been 
familiar to him as the bleating of his sheep. 

“ Why beant the oud measter dead, and beant this his 
funeral ? ” 

“And what of that?” said Kester, still busy with her 
meats and pies and drinks. “ Thou’rt reight glad I reckon 
to get thy whack of grub and ale for once without a growl 
and a curse. Grief ! I should think so, when thou art 
goin’ to change thy hard measter for the kindest and best 
missus that ever drew breath.” 

“ But he weren’t such a bad measter after all,” said Goff. 

“ He were a brute like, but he were a farmer, and that’s 
sayin’ sum mat in these days, when shopkeepers from 
Lincoln and Burgh think they can come and till the soil 
reight off, and foine gentlemen do it by deputy, and think 
it’s to be done by readin’ books and speechifying at 
meetins’.” 

“Well, come, that’s a pretty long speech for thee, 
howsumdever,” said Kester, “ and thou shalt have a drink 
to stop thy mouth, at any rate.” 

Kester poured from a big stone jug a mug of foaming 
ale, which Goff put steadily to his lips. 

While he drew breath for a second and last draught, 
he twirled the mug artistically round, so that the liquor be- 
came a whirpool with dancing heads at the top, and when 
the swing of the ale threatened to hurl the foam over the 
edge of the cup, he gulped it down and smacked his lips. 

“Well, squire weren’t as good as his ale, Kester,” he said, 
as he handed her the empty mug. 

“ Good ! ” said Mrs. Kester. “ Who were he good to ? ” 

“ I dunno exactly, but 1 likes to speak well of them as is 
dead.” 

“ Speak truth on ’em, Goff ; speak truth, dead or alive.” 

“ Yes, that’s reight ; but if measter were a bit of a tyrant 
like, a dammin’ and goin’ on at least thing as went wrong, 
why he were good as th’ world goes to young measter 
John.” 

“ You think so ?” Kester replied, interrogatively. 


CRUEL LONDON. 


25 


“ He gave him a hoame and his clothes, and pocket- 
money.” 

“ And made him work like a farm-laborer to pay for 
them.” 

“ But John were not his own kith and kin, Kester, and 
It wor only right he should work.” 

“John wur son of his only friend in the world — a friend 
as did Squire Martin a service once when he needed it, and 
he promised to bringup his friend’s lad when hisfather died, 
and he has brought him up wi’ a vengeance.” 

Goff argued more in a spirit of opposition than from 
principle or conviction, unless the proverb, “ Say no ill of 
the dead” was moving him to dispute with Kester, who 
liked a wrangle, and who had beaten the old squire in 
many a battle of words, at the end of which she had always 
given notice to leave her place, and never once attempted 
to carry her warning to completion. 

“ But, come now, Kester, you mun own he wur kind to 
Miss Jane.” 

Goff thrust his hands into his corduroy breeches and 
looked up defiantly. 

“ Kind ! I should think so. And who could help it ? ” 

“ Kot me, nor anybody as I know on,” said Goff’, cowed, 
and now resolved to give in. 

“ If he loved anything, he loved Miss Jane. Perliaps 
she took after him in his looks, perhaps because she tended 
him and coddled him and saved him expense, and kept 
things straight, wrote his letters, kept- his books. And, 
what’s more, ’cos she was the only relation he had in the 
wide world as I ever heard on, except some stuck-up folk 
in London as claimed to kinship wi’ him last Chrismas, 
when they wrote and was sorry he was ill, they said, and 
sent that barrel of oysters as none of us could open, and 
which Squire smashed with the coal-hammer.” 

Goff laughed at the memory of that famous scene with 
the oysters, but before his guffaw was well out another 
memory of the absence of its proper exercise troubled him. 

“Hey! Howd hard, Kester? I’ve forgot to tell thee. 
Talking o’ them relations, that’s what I ha’ been trying to 
think on ole th’ day. They’ve come ! ” 

“ Who’s come ? ” exclaimed Kester, smoothing her apron, 
and sittino: down for the first time since breakfast. “ Who’s 
come?” 

She sat opposite Goff, and looked him full in the face. 


26 


CRUEL LONDON, 


He slowly buttoned his velveteen coat and stood up. 

“ Why, dang it, I must be soft to ha’ forgot. Why, 
them Lundon folk; they cum to the Crown at Burgh by 
Lundon train last night — a whole heap on’em, wi’ rugs and 
luggage enough to stock ole the Marsh ; and they were a- 
sayin’ on ” 

At this moment there appeared on the scene an appari- 
tion which startled both Goff and Kester. 


CHAPTER yi. 

TIM MALONEY INTRODUCES HIMSELF TO MRS. KESTEB. 

The apparition was a pair of twinkling eyes, a shock of 
brown hair confined under a tall hat with a black cockade, 
a black coat adorned with livery buttons, and a smile that 
was as defiant as the flourish with which Tim Maloney took 
off his hat and saluted Mrs. Kester. 

“ And who are you, and where do you come from, and 
what do you want ? ” was the explicit and complete in- 
quiry of Mrs. Kester, as Tim advanced to the centre of the 
room. 

“I am Tim Maloney, the confidential man of Jeremiah 
Sleaford, Esq., Fitzfoy Square, London, and I want you, 
if you are, as I conclude, Mrs. Kester, and long life to 
you.” 

“ Well, here I am, and what do you want me for with 
your Irish blarney ? ” 

“ My governor, his son the captain, and Mrs. Sleaford 
are coming to rade the will, and will you be so kind as to 
accommodate them as becomes the oldest relatives of the 
defunct? I’ll just help myself, if you’ve no objection.” 

Tim laid his hand upon a decanter of sherry. 

“ Let that wine alone, it’s for your betters,” said Kester. 

“ Me betthers ! And who may they be ? The iiligant 
family I’ve left at the Crown, the other side o’ this bog- 
trotting marsh ? ” 

Tim drank a glass of wine in spite of Kester’s protest. 

“ I’ve got no betthers, and why the devil I consent to 
wear this livery is a myst('ry to me, seein’ as I’m really a 


CRUEL LONDON. 


27 


citizen of the United States of America, and expect one 
day to be the President.” 

“ r thought you were an Irishman,” said Kester. 

“Oirish, is it?” said Tim, in an unmistakable brogue. 
“ Divil a bit, American ivry inch of me ; I’m only over 
here for political reasons, a mission which will be heard of 
— but no matther, as you were sayin’, the distinguished 
family of the Sleafords will be here soon, and I want to see 
their rooms, and order dinner fbr them.” 

Goff looked at Kester, and the old sheep-dog stretched 
himself, and sniffed inquiringly at the ambassador of the 
Sleafords. 

“ Why, one would think Manor Farm and lands belonged 
to your measter, the .way he sends his orders,” said Kester, 
looking at Tim all over, and taking the decanter from his 
hand just as he was about to fill for himself another glass. 

“ Be jabers, perhaps it does,” said Tim. 

“What ! ” exclaimed Goff, speaking for the first time ; 
“thou’d better keep thy jabers for Lundon, my lad, or thou 
may get thyself into trouble.” 

Kester nodded approvingly at Goff, and put a chump of 
w'ood on the fire with an emphasis that sent thousands of 
sparks flying up the chimney. 

“Now, look here, my friends,” said Tim, taking a seat, 
and touching his hat thoughtfully, “ shure an’ I’ve not come 
here to make myself disagreeable to ye, but doesn’t it seem 
likely that my people, the Sleafords, bein’ related to the 
deceased, he may have left them his estates ? ” 

“ If you ask me,” said Goff, “ I should think — ” 

“ But I don’t ask you,” said Tim leaning back and watch- 
ing Mrs. Kester, who stood eying him in no friendly spirit. 
“ i don’t presume to ax ye anything of the kind ; it is simply 
my intention to tell ye that the Sleafords, of Fitzroy Square, 
London, have come down to hear the will read.” 

“ Then they can trapass back again for anything they’ll 
get,” said Kester. 

“ But ye don’t bear any malice to me ? ” cried Tim, with 
a show of deference, which he suddenly found desirable in 
presence of Kester’s threatening glances. 

“Malice ! When we tread on a beetle we don’t bear any 
malice ; we just want the thing out of the way, and that’s 
all,” said Kester. 

Tim leaped from his seat, and Goff laughed aloud, and. 
hitting his thigh a sounding slap, said, — 


^8 


CRUEL LONDON, 


“ That were a good ’un, and how did Mr. Flibbertigibbet 
like it ? ” 

Tim said he hadn’t the honor of Mr. Flipperty’s — what’s 
his name’s — acquaintance. 

“ Here, sit ye down,” said Kester ; “ Lincolnshire folk 
weant be inhospitable to a stranger, and you can’t help it, 
I reckon, that yer master’s a fool and a grab-all.” 

“ My sentiments, Mrs. Kester,” said Tim, re-seating him- 
self, and extending his hand towards the sherry, but only 
to make Kester put the decanter further from his reach. 

Kester bustled about while she talked, cutting thick 
slices of bread and cake, putting artful decorations of 
parsley on the ham and beef, dusting dishes, and patting 
the salt down in the great silver salt-cellars. 

She wore a big coarse apron over a black merino dress, 
that fitted her portly figure. Her hair was black as night, 
though she was a woman of forty-five, and there was hardly 
a wrinkle in her healthy, olive-hued cheeks. Her shapely 
arms were bared to the elbow, indicating a figure that at 
one time must have been perfect. 

She had been a widow for twenty years, though she 
might have married half the yeomen in the Marsh. 

“TSTo, she had had one good husband,” she said, “ and 
she’d never run the risk of getting a bad one, for fear she’d 
be tempted to kill him.” What she had seen of married life 
outside her own experience made her come to the con- 
clusion that some men had had a narrow escape, because 
she could no more stand to be put upon and beaten by a 
man than she could fly, and she thanked Heaven she had 
had a good husband, for whom she would have laid down 
her life, just as she would now for Miss Jane Crosby, who 
was better than the best man that ever stepped, and de- 
served a piince for a husband if there was a prince worthy 
of her, which she doubted very much. 

“ Now, look here, young mister, what’s your name?” 

“Tim Maloney,” said Tim, with a fascinating smile, 
which spread right across his face like a gleam of light upon 
a watery landscape. 

“ Now listen, Mister Tim Maloney.” 

“Yes, ma’am,” said Tim. 

“ Everybody knows how Squire Martin has left his 
property. It’s all for his niece. Miss Jane, and it’s all to 
l)e give to her as soon as folks come from funeral, in about 
an hour from this.” 


CRUEL LONDON. 


29 


Goff took his seat in front of the fire once more, and 
nodded assent to all Mrs. Kester said, while Shep blinked his 
acquiescence also. 

“ And everybody knows what Miss Crosby’s goin’ to do 
with it. She’ll marry John Kerman and settle down in the 
old house they have helped to keep and make sunshine for, 
ever since house can remember them.” 

“ Then will ye be after telling me that Mr. Sleaford is 
out of the will, and there is no chance of the young captain 
marrying the heiress ? ” asked Tim. . 

Young fiddlestick,” said Kester, scornfully ; “not the 
least. She’ll marry John Kerman, the son of th’ owd 
squire’s friend, and fond on him, as all th’ Marsh knows; 
he’s about the only one as don’t see it right out, the only 
one as don’t understand his own happiness, or how well his 
bread is buttered ; though make no mistake, he’s a reight 
manly fellow, trodden down a good deal by a hard master ; 
but he’s got true Lincolnshire spirit, and they’ll make the 
finest couple of any two in the whole county. Kow you 
know as much as your betters, and if you’re not the fool 
you look, you’ll just behave yourself accordingly, for here 
comes my missus — get up on your feet and be respectful.” 


CHAPTER YII. 

DISCOUNTING THE FUTURE. 

With the appearance of Miss Crosby in the kitcnen, 
carriage wheels were heard coming along the drive in front 
of the house, and Tim, touching his red head,, said, “ Beg 
pardon, miss, my people,” and disappeared. 

Jane looked at Kester for an explanation. 

, “ It be Sleafords, from London, as says they be relations 

and cum . to read will,’ said Kester, wiping her hands upon 
her apron, previous to taking it off, 

“ Yes, I have heard uncle Martin mention them ; and 
don’t you remember, two years ago, young Mr. Sleaford, 
the captain as he was called, coming here to shoot ? ” 

“ Think I do remember sum mat of the sort,” said 
Kester. 


30 


CRUEL LONDON. 


A loud knock at the front door interrupted the con- 
versation. Miss Crosby asked Mrs. Kesler to go at once 
and show the visitors into the front parlor. 

Mrs. Kester silently obeyed, and Goff stood, hat in hand, 
by the inglenook. 

“My service to you, can I do anything? ” he said. 

“Yes,’" replied Kester, returning, “ go and help yon 
whipper-snapper Irish fellow to get the luggage in, for these 
Sleafords have enough to fill best bedroom.” 

Jane was not accustomed to receive strange company, 
and she felt considerably embarrassed for the moment. It 
was a sufficient tax upon her that she held the chief position 
as mourner and manager of the house on so solemn an 
occasion. She had been the only person in the family or in 
the parish who had felt the death of her uncle as a subject 
for sorrow ; and even she had found consolation in the fact 
that he was a very old man, and had lived, as the parson 
said, beyond the allotted age. Moreover, the duties of her 
new and responsible position had prevented her from 
dwelling too much upon the melancholy event, and the 
secret whispering of her heart told her that there was no 
longer a barrier betw.een her and the man she loved. John 
Kerman had had a hard life. He should be miserable no 
longer. When the proper period of black was over, and she 
could put on half-mourning, the day might be fixed, and 
John should be master of the Manor Farm and all the land 
which uncle Martin had left her. All this was in Jane 
Crosby’s mind, not quite as clearly as we have put it, but it 
was there, and the feeling that she had the power to com- 
pensate Jack for all the troubles of his life, and the happy 
consciousness of her deep and sincere love for him, sur- 
rounded her with an atmosphere that did not belong to the 
general gloom attending a funeral. Hot that Jane was in- 
sensible of the sadness of death, come it soon or latef for 
she had wept bitter tears over the old man ; she had sat 
alone in a quiet room upstairs where he had lain ; sat alone 
in the moonlight and prayed by tl>e side of the great white 
bed where they had placed him, with his poor arms humbly' 
folded across his breast. But she was young, and her time 
•had to come; he was old, and his day was over;- and now 
he had gone. The room where he had been, the room which 
she crept by at night, the room which })eople entered on 
tiptoe, the room which had begun to be ghostly, was once 
more open. The blinds were drawn, and all the neighbors 


CRUEL LONDON. 


81 


were coming back from the funeral to eat and drink in a 
solemn kind of way it is true, but the change from the first 
awful surprise of deatli was great, and occupation had lifted 
a load from tlie mind of th6 lieiress, to whom everybody 
now paid an excess of respect and attention. 

When she entered the front parlor or drawing-room, she 
found Jeremiah Sleaford, Esq., Mrs. Sleaford, and Mr. Tom 
Sleaford, all attired in the most scrupulous black. 

“ Miss Crosby, 1 presume,” said Sleaford in a suppressed 
voice of sympathy and admiration. “ We are your rela- 
tions from town, your only relatives in the world, I believe, 
though distant — twenty-fourth cousins or something of that 
kind ; but no matter, blood is tliicker than water. Permit 
me, Mrs. Sleaford, my wife, and Captain Sleaford, my son, 
who has, he tells me, the honor of a previous introduction.” 

“I think we have met once,” said Jane, a little confused 
by the solemn pomposity of Mr. Sleaford. 

Mrs. Sleaford bowed. Captain Sleaford bowed, and 
Jeremiah Sleaford, Esq., continued to talk. 

“ Melancholy event that brings us here, but melancholy 
events of this kind knit the living still closer together ; in 
this case the deceased, as you will find, was most anxious 
that it should be so — most anxious, my dear Miss Crosby. 
^We have been to the church, but we did not stay to wit- 
ness the ceremony at the grave. Mrs. Sleaford is pecu- 
liarly sensitive, and I thought it best to come on to the farm 
and see you, for naturally you may require advice at such 
a time, and as our dear deceased relative insisted upon me 
drawing his last will and testament, I am here in double 
trust as it were.” 

Mr. Sleaford rubbed his hands and sighed. 

“ You didn’t visit Uncle Martin during his lifetime ? ” 
Miss Crosby remarked. 

“ Not lately, not lately,” said Sleaford ; “ always bn 
the best of terms, but moving in different spheres, yet the 
observation is merited as a commentary on our present 
grief, but we could not well come without being invited. 
Sly son, the captain, was down here three years ago, and I 
had- the pleasure of carrying a gun on this estate before 
you were born, my dear — before you were born. And as 
for Tom, he would have been only too delighted to have 
come again, for lie has done nothing but talk of you ever 
since, the rogue.” 

A politic falsehood. Jane was on a visit at Burgh 


32 


CRUEL LONDON. 


during Tom’s visit, and she onlj met him at the railway 
station as he was leaving for London. Jeremiah Sleaford, 
Esq., had often tried to’ make Tom talk of the girl, but 
Tom had not remembered much about her, and his father 
had always held forth her chief attraction to be her inherit- 
ance of her uncle’s money. 

“ Will you take anything? ” asked Jane, in her homely 
way, seeing no other retreat from compliments that gave 
her no pleasure, and not caring at that moment to enter 
into the question of a relation to herself, however remote, 
seeing that this was the first time it had been seriously 
mentioned in her presence. 

“ Thank you, no,” said Mr. Sleaford. “ If you will 
allow the maid to show me to my room, I shall feel greatly 
obliged.” 

An inquiring look was Jane’s only reply. 

“We propose to remain here until to-morrow,” said • 
Mrs. Sleaford. 

“Yes, certainly, my dear Jane,” said Jeremiah, smiling 
benignantly on Miss Crosby ; “ we may hare more impor- 
tant and interesting business to settle than you dream of.” 

“I will send Mrs.. Kester to you, madam,” said Jane; 
“ she will attend to your wants.” 

“ Thank you very much,” said Sleaford, nudging Tom, 
who rushed to open the door for Jane as she left the room. 

“A fine young woman — a splendid young woman,” said 
Sleaford ; “ no idea, 1 expect, what is in store for her ; 
great mistake in the testator if he has not confided every- 
thing to her. Are you in love with her, Tom ? ” 

“ No,” said Tom, superciliously. “ She’s a stunning girl, 
however.” 

“ Too fat,” said Mrs. Sleaford. 

“ No, my dear, not at all ; she’s a ripe specimen of Lin- 
colnshire beauty, and I shall be proud to have her for a 
daughter-in-law. I expect you to fall in love with her at 
once, Tom.” 

“Anything else to oblige, governor?” 

“ Yes ; if it be possible for you to propose to her before 
the will is read, do it.” 

“ What ! make love at a funeral? ” 

“Richard the Third did it,” said Sleaford pere. “I 
don’t see why you should object. Hush ! and I’ll tell you 
a secret — the secret — so that you may frame your conduct 
accordingly. Squire Martin, our dear deceased relation, 


CRUEL LONDON. 


33 


lias left the bulk of his property to you, Tom Sleaford, the 
only sou of Jeremiah Sleaford, on one condition.” 

“ Yes ! ” said Mrs. Sleaford and Tom together. 

“The condition! ” exclaimed Tom, trembling with ex- 
citement. 

“ That you marry Jane Crosby.” 

“ Good heavens 1 ” said Tom. 

“ And good father,” said Jeremiah. “I arranged the 
whole thing for you.” 

“ And that was the secret,” said Mrs. Sleaford, rising 
and kissing her husband upon the. forehead. 

“ It was,” said Jeremiah ; “ it was.” 

For a moment they were all more or less overcome by 
this disclosure of wealth. Jeremiah was the first to rouse 
himself. 

“ So now, Tom, you know your cue. Fall in love before 
the will is read; propose beforehand if you can.' Lucky 
dog ! If I had only had such an opening at the outset of 
my career ! ” 

Mrs. Kester announced that Mr. Sleaford’s room was 
ready, whereupon Jeremiah and his lady, as Kester called 
the-'original owner of Fitzroy Square, left the parlor, and 
followed the retreating form of the Lincolnshire dame. 

Tom strolled into the kitchen, where Jane was sitting in 
the broad window-seat looking towards the church. The 
young man obeyed his father at once. He commenced to- 
make love to Miss Crosby in presence of the funeral baked 
meats. 

“ Glad I’m not your first cousin, at any rate. Miss Jane.” 

“Why?” 

“ Because marriage between first cousins is forbidden, 
don’t you know ? ” 

“ I didn’t know, sir.” 

“ It’s true ; so that if 1 were your first cousin I couldn’t 
lay my hand and heart at your feet.” 

“ I- suppose these are London manners, Mr. Sleaford ? ” 

“ Yes ; we don’t beat about the bush in London, and you 
must have a protector; and I say what I have in my heart 
before I know what the will contains.” 

“ In your what ? ” 

“ My heart.” 

“ Are you serious, Mr. Sleaford? ” 

“ As the grave.” 


34 


CRUEL LONDON. 


The grave, cousin ; that word ought to recall us to the 
sad business of to-day.” 

“ It does. But the funeral is over by this time, and we 
cannot be always regretting the dear departed.” 

“None of us pretend to regret Uncle Martin much, and 
I should hardly be believed if I made a fuss, though in my 
heart I do sorrow over him, for he was kind and good to 
me ; and there’s always a certain sorrow about death, 
though he who has gone might have been unloved by all 
except me.” 

“Yes?” 

“ In his latest hours he was a good, true man ; and if he 
could have seen you talking like this to me he would have 
taken you by the shoulder and put you out at the door.” 

Miss Crosby rose and walked to the other end of the 
kitchen. 

“ Now I have offended you,” said Tom. “I'm awfully 
sorry ; it’s my stupidity. I don’t know any better. Miss 
Crosby; don’t be annoyed, put it down to my London edu- 
cation ; up there everything is a matter of business — fun- 
erals, will, courtship, marriage.” 

“I know nothing of London or London ways, so I take 
your word for it and forgive you.” 

“ And you don’t think any the worse of me ? ” 

“ No.” 

“Not a little bit ? ” 

“ No.” 

“ You won’t treasure it up against me in the future ? ” 

“No; and I apologize for seeming rough in my answer. 
Will that do, sir ? ” 

As she 8])oke the funeral party bustled in. Gfbff handed 
the chairs about, Kester busied lierself at the spacious 
kitchen dresser, Mr. Sleaford pushed his way to the head of 
the table. 

“ Zancher Brown, take some cake,” said Miss Crosby, 
pushing a plate towards Mr. Brown, a stolid, smiling far- 
mer ; “ and, Elijah Ward, help yourself,” she continued, 
placing a bottle before a stout Marsh ite, who said certainly 
he would, and hoped she found herself well. 

Then Mrs. Kester paid similar attention to Mr. Amos 
Frith, Jmnes Joiinson, Luke Giles, and half a dozen others ; 
and amidst the clash of kniv'es and forks Jane observed 
that “ Our John ” (as she called Mr. John Kerman when 
•he didn’t call him Ja«k) was not of the party. Hurrying 


CRUEL T.ONDON. 


85 


into the best parlor^ tlie better to command a full view of 
the country, she found Jack standing in the middle of the 
room. 

“ Why, John, you look troubled,” she said. 

■“ I am a bit,” said the young man, with an expression 
of pain and defiance on his face that was quite foreign to 
its usual expression. 

“Why what have you been doing? ” Jane asked, look- 
ing into his -wondering brown eyes. 

“Thinkin,’ Jane, thinkin’.” 

“What, with that dear old head?” 

Jane saw that something serious was the matter, and she 
hoped to dispel the trouble, whatever it might be with 
badinage. She had always managed John, standing be- 
tween him and Uncle Martin when to do so was to risk shar- 
ing in the blows which more than once the old man would 
have showered upon his dead friend’s only son if she had 
not stood between them. 

“ Well, then, I’ve been tryin’ to think.” 

“ Don’t do it, lad ; leave me to think for you, Jack, as I 
have always done.” 

“Aye, that’s one o’ things as I been tryin’ to think on. 
[t’s titne as I were, out o’ leadin’-strings, Jane. I’ve been 
thinkin’ of owd Martin’s miserly ways, our hard life here, 
so narrow-like as compared witl) these folks as comes from 
London, with shakin’ of hands and how do you do, and such 
like pleasant ways ; and I’ve been thinkin’ of our want of 
education, at least my want of it, and I thought ” 

“Yes, John, yes, you thought.” 

“Well, now, as owd man’s dead and buried, and left 
you his heiress and all the brass and lands, I thought as I’d 
somehow become a free man, like other slaves in America 
as was given their liberty, and I thought ” 

“ Yes. Well, what more did you think? ” 

“I don’t know as I thought much more, for I got 
choked like, and came in here, for this idea of freedom got 
hold on me, and I seemed as if I’d come into my fortune 
like, just as thou hast.” 

“ Why, Jack, to listen to you, one would think you had 
been a prisoner here.” 

“ And so I have,” said the young man, quickly, pushing 
his brown hair from off his sunburnt face 

“A prisoner to wha**^” 


m 


CRUEL LONDON, 


Jane could only look at her companion and friend with 
surprise. He had never talked like this before. Indeed, 
she hardly knew that he had more than two ideas in his 
head : one, a fixed resolve to be kind to her ; the other, to 
work as hard as he could from morning till night. 

“ To duty, Jane. Uncle Martin, as you call him — and 
you had right — took us both when we were little better 
nor children : thee because thou wast his sister’s child, me 
because I was no better than a pauper lad, left destitute by 
.a father who had once befriended Mr. Martin. Well, what 
happened? We both on us repaid his kindness by harder 
work than he’d ha’ gotten out of others. You labored 
from custom, and because it’s your nature to sacrifice your- 
self. I did it from duty; accordin’ to parson’s text, to do 
your duty in that station of life as it’s pleased God to call 
you ; and I felt, when I wur old enough to think about it, 
that I owed something to the squire, and I’ve paid him back 
a hundred times over. He’s dead, Jane and I’m free,” 

Jack Kerman, stalwart, broad of limb, and open and 
frank of face, flung himself into a chair, and swung his 
broad felt hat to and fro. 

“ Jack, are you mad ? ” exclaimed the girl, her face 
flushed, tears in her eyes. 

“ No lass,” said Kerman, with a palpable effort to be calm. 
“ He’s left you the property, and I’m glad.. Nobody has 
deserved it like you. He leaves me the world, and I’m not 
sorry at that. I want to see the world. I want to say good- 
by, Jane, before I go, and I can say it now.” 

Jane Crosby staggered for a moment as if she were 
about to fall. 

The man she loved so much that she secretly rejoiced in 
her prospect of wealth that she might lavish 'it upon .him 
rushed towards her. She put her hand out to avoid his 
touch. 

“ It’s nothing John ; don’t mind me, you’ve only sur- 
prised me a bit, and I’m but a woman after all, though you 
evidently think I have all the strength of a man. There, 
do as you think best. Jack. - But out of respect to the neigh- 
bors, to say nothing of me, perhaps you’ll come in and hear 
the will read.” 

- She left the room, followed presently by Jack Kerman, 
W'ho was known for his strength and pluck all through the 
north. He was often called Jack the silent, for he was a 
young man o£ few words, and everybody knew that he was 


CRUEL LONDON, 


37 


a sort of slave to Squire Martin, protected by Miss Crosby, 
who made no secret of her admiration for him. The re- 
straint of the master gone just as the young fellow had come 
to man’s estate, John Kerman had communed with the soul 
within him, and after a long and ardent struggle, his ambi- 
tion found utterance; not that his ambition was at all clear 
or defined ; it only meant freedom, the desire to go beyond 
the Lincolnshire marslies, the vague wish of the prisoner 
who wants to stand on the other side of iron bars, for John 
Kerman had never been beyond Boston in all his life and 
there, on market-days,. at the inn he had heard commerical 
travellers talk of the great city of 'London, and of a world 
that seemed to beckon him the moment Squire Martin’s eyes 
were no longer upon him, -his voice no longer about him, like 
the slave-driver’s whip. 

He blundered into the room presently to hear the will 
read, and to discover, amidst the general consternation of 
the assembled crowd, tliat Uncle Martin had in his latter 
days, prepared a surprise for the Marsh, which speedily be- 
came the talk and wonder of the whole county. 


CHAPTER VIH. 

A WILL FULL OF SURPRISES. 

The fire leaped up the spacious chimney. Shep crouched 
by the inglenook, and watched the unaccustomed scene. A 
goodly'company sat round the long table. The autumn wind 
had dispelled the fog, and you could see from the window a 
wide stretch of flat country.' 

“ Ladies and gefttleman,” said Mr. Jabez Thompson, of 
the firm of Thompson & Foxwell, the local solicitors, “ I will 
now, with your permission, perform a melancholy but neces- 
sary duty,” 

“ What duty, sir ? ” asked Mr. Sleaford, observing that 
Mr. Jabez Thompson produced a parchment. 

“That of reading the will of the deceased Ephraim 
Martin, sir,” said Mr. Thompson. 

“ Indeed ! I am here for that purpose,” said Mr. Slea- 
ford, but with that amount of coolness which the situation 
demanded. 


88 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“Yes, I expected you were here with some intention of 
the kind; tlie defunct led me to infer that you would be 
here, and he resisted my wish to inform you of the date of 
his latest will and testament. He discovered the mistake 
you had made only a month ago, when he took it into his 
head to call at the b.ank and read the will afresh.” 

Mr. Jeremiah Sleaford turned pale, and looked anxious- 
ly at Mr. Thompson. 

“ There is no necessity for alarm, Mr. Sleaford, rest 
assured ; my old client was so rejoiced to find he had time 
to rectify the error, that he desired to hare the matter rest 
as ooncermug no one but ourselves.” 

“ Thank you,” said Jeremiah. “ Will you permit me to 
look at your document for a monient? lam desirous that 
this meeting should bo perfectly harmonious.” 

Jabez Thompson handed the will to Mr. Sleaford, who 
scanned it quickly, and noticing tliat the date was indeed 
recent, and the signature of the testator and witnesses 
evidently in proper order, he gave it back to the local soli- 
citor. 

“ May I say a word in explanation ? ” 

“ Certainly, if you please.” 

“ Ladies and gentleman,” said Mr. Jeremiah Sleaford, 
“ pardon this little delay. The truth is, the defunct made 
a will several years ago, which I expected was his last. 
Since then it appears he has made another, and I therefore 
withdraw my pretensions in favor of the’ latest will and the 
deceased’s most recent solicitor.” 

A hum of approval went round the table at the frank, 
honest way in which Mr. Sleaford gave in to Mr. Thompson. 
Tom and his mother, however, could see that something had 
gone seriously wrong in regard to the arrangements which 
Jeyemiah Sleaford, Esquire, had been making on the 
strength of Squire Martin’s will. At the same time they 
we're somewhat relieved when they saw the color come 
back to Jeremiah’s cheeks, and felt that confidence was 
restored in the tone of his voice. Jeremiah alone appre- 
ciated the importance of Jabez Thompson’s assurance, that 
“there was no necessity for alarm.” The head of the house 
of SleMord felt the' full force of the escape which the rival 
lawyer’s words implied, and for a moment he was prepared 
to go back to London contentedly, without being one penny 
the richer by Squire MaLlin’s d«e<‘ith. 

“ I, Ephraim Martin,” began Mr. Thompson, “ of Manor 


CRUEL LONDON. 


39 


Farm, The Marsh, in the county of Lincoln, do hereby re- 
voke all wills, codicils,- and other testamentary dispositions 
heretofore made by me, and do declare this to be my last 
will and testament.” 

“Are tlie witnesses alive, sir?” asked Mr. Sleaford, un- 
willing, even in the presence of a possible exposure of his 
conduct, to lose all control over the proceedings. 

“ They are. Kester Shaw and William "Goff are the 
witnesses.” 

“They look alive,” said Tom, following the index finger 
of Mr. Thompson, as it pointed in the direction of the two 
defunct’s head servants. 

“ It must be a great consolation to our dear cousin to 
know that they are alive,” said Mrs. Sleaford, mildly. 

“ Ciertiiinly, yes, my dear,” said Jeremiah. 

“ If there are no more questions to be asked,” said Mr. 
Thpmpson, looking round deprecatingly, “ I would again 
proceed to state that— — ” 

“I beg pardon, sir. It may be as well to be info^jmed 
whether there are any surviving relatives of the deceased 
who are not present ? ” 

“ All the surviving relatives are present, Mr. Sleaford.” 

“ Thank you fit is always awkward when some surviving 
relative turns up and makes claims afterwards^ like Enoch 
Arden,” observed Mr. Sleaford, sighing. 

“ Or Robinson Crusoe,” said Tom. 

“I ain not aware that Robinson Crusoe ever claimed 
anything under a will. Your observation is an unnecessary 
interruption. Pray proceed, Mr. Thompson.” 

Mr. Sleaford’observed an expression of annoyance in the 
local sdlicitor’s eye that warned him to be careful, and al- 
though a score of other questions suggested themselves, 
he waved his hand for silence, and the reading of the will 
went on. A thousand pounds each were left to Kester and 
Goff, a few thousand pounds were bequeathed to the county 
hospital ; small legacies were distributed among neighbors ; 
and then the will recited that Jeremiah Sleaford was quite 
forgiven the mistake he had made in drawing a former will, 
“ the said Ephraim, feeling that he has not long to live, and 
desiring to do an act of special grace, in the hope of wiping 
out some of the brutalities of an embittered life, not only 
forgives his distant relative, Jeremiah Sleaford, but be- 
queaths to the said Jeremiah, his heirs, executors, and as- 
signs, the sum of ten thousand pounds, that he may have 


40 


CRUEL LONDON, 


no moi-e excuse to make mistakes in wills or other docu- 
ments.” , _ 

“ Heaven rest his soul,” exclaimed Jeremiah Sleaford. 
“ He was a good and just man.” 

With which remark the head of the household of Fitz- 
roy Square buried his face in his hands to hide his emotion ; 
for he had, by, a fraudulent, artifice, inserted the name of 
his own son in the place of that of John Kerman, the im- 
portance of which change the reader will presently under- 
stand. The t(^stator had not prosecuted or exposed him on 
making this discovery, but had kej j his wicked secret and 
left him ten thousand pounds, without which aid at this 
present moment Jeremiah Sleaford would have been 
ruined for the third time. 

No one at the table understood Mr. Sleaford’s trouble 
except the local solicitor, who only paused for a moment in 
his recitation of the will. 

“ To my dear niece, Jane Cr.osby,” he continued, “ I 
bequeath the black box marked with my initials, and now 
in thh custody of my solicitor, Jabez Tliornpson.” 

“ Eh, dear, what’s in it ? ” exclaimed Mrs. Kester, 
speaking for the first time. 

“ Here is the key. Miss Crosby can open it if she 
likes.” 

Mrs. Kester took the key. 

“ Shall I open it. Miss Jane ?” 

“ If you please.” 

The box was easily opened. Every eye was strained 
towards it. Even Mr. Sleaford looked up. 

“ A bunch of owd flowers ? ” said Kester, in amazement, 
turning the box upside down, and kicking a withered 
bouquet of violets, which Jane picked up. 

“ I gave them to Uncle Martin five years ago, on his 
birthday, with a knife that had a corkscrew in it,” slie said. 

Mr. Sleaford rose solemnly and tapped the box with his 
gold-headed pencil-case. 

“No false bottom, no secret drawers ; no, evidently an 
empty box, a very empty box. What a strange legacy,” 
he said, resuming his seat, , 

“ Then, who’s got the brass ? ” exclaimed Mr. Shaw, 
who found his tongue now for the first time during the 
business. 

“Listen; I have nearly finished,” said Mr. Thompson. 
“ And I give, devise, and bequeath all the other real and 


CRUEL LONDON. 


41 

personal estate of which I shall be possessed or entitled at 
the time of my decease, unto John Kerman ” 

The remaining technicalities of the will went for 
nothing ; nobody heard them ; the whole company stood 
upon its feet with astonishment when Jack Kerman was 
declared to be Squire Martin’s heir. 

“ Miss Crosby retains possession of the Manor Farm for 
three years,” said Mr. Thomipson, when the excitement had 
somewhat subsided ; “ she cannot be disturbed in any way 
until that period is concluded ; and this, Mr. Kerman, is 
the only condition attached to the bequest.” 

In the will which Uncle Martin had previously made, 
he had stipulated for the marriage of Kerman to his niece, 
each to enjoy the revenue of the estate, in proportion, for 
three years^ at the end of which all the property to revert 
to Jane Crosby, unless she had with her own free consent 
married Kerman ; the old man having been long convinced 
that she had made up her mind to that match and no 
other ; and, judging from the character of Jack’s father 
rather than from any exhibition of individuality in the son, 
that a dogged pride might prevent him from accepting 
wealth at the hands of his wife. Mr. Sleaford had dex- 
trously inserted his own son’s name in the place of Ker- 
man’s, and had contrived to shuffle that spurious will under 
Martin’s pen for signature ; this will had lain at the bank 
as arranged, until recently, when the squire, being very 
unwell, thought he would ride over to Lincoln and read 
the document, with a view to some changes which he had 
had in his mind to make, and which changes were to some 
extent indicated in that last conversation with his niece. 
It was then that he discovered Mr. Jeremiah Sleaford’s 
sharp practice, which he had forgiven with ^a Quixotic 
generosity that surprised Mr. Jabez Thompson, who knew 
little or nothing of the squire’s early troubles. The old 
man, when he saw what Sleaford had done, remembered, 
his own temptations ‘in a serious monetary difficulty, re- 
lieved by timely aid by Jack Kerman’s father. Under the 
influence of those early days, brought into strong relief by 
the presentiment that his last harvest home was at an end, 
he made that last will, which soon became the talk of the 
county. 

Before Mr. Jabez Thompson left the house after read- 
ing the will, Jeremiah Sleaford learnt from him that no 


42 


CRUEL LCfNDON. 


other reference could or would be made to the document 
in which the mistake had been made. 

“ Indeed,” said the local solicitor, “ I have forgotten 
the error, whatever it was ; it is no business of mine to 
remember it, and the deceased did not enter into any minute 
explanation of it. If the defunct was content to take no 
further notice of the matter tiian to cover it with a legacy 
of ten thousand pounds, and you are satisfied, there is an 
end to the business — so far as I am concerned, at all 
events.” 

Mr. Sleaford assured his professional colleague tliat the 
mistake was not so serious as might have at first ap])eared, 
but at the same time nothing could exceed the noble, the 
almost Utopian way in which his relative, Ephraim Martin, 
had met it, and so, for the present, the two gentlemen 
parted, Sleaford beside himself with joy at his wonderful 
escape, and thinking at the moment that he would never 
again run the risk attending a fishy transaction. 

“ At the same time,” he said, as if his son Tom had 
read his thought, “ there is no harm in our capturing Mr. 
Kerman.” 

“Not at all,” said Tom. “ He’s a jolly fellow ; uncouth, 
perhaps, and his dialect is thick ; but he can be cured of 
that.” 

“ He has enough money to cure him of anything,” said 
Mr. Sleaford. * 

“ Am I to go in for Miss Crosby now ? ” asked Tom. 
“ An old box and a bunch of flowers don’t represent much 
in the city.” 

“ No, Tom, no,” said Sleaford ; “ though she’s a deuced 
fine girl for all that, and I’m sorry for her. Extraordinary 
man, old . Martin — very extraordinary. Befriends his en- 
emies, cuts otf his dearest friend with an empty box.” 

“ Yes, by Jove ! it’s the rummest go out.” 

“ Ask Mr. Kerman to come to town with us. It will 
be a change for him. You can show him London. We’ll 
make him a director of the Cemetery Board ; it will be do 
ing him a kindness.” 

“All right; I’ll take him to my tailor’s and; rig him 
out, put him through as the county gentleman, thb fine 
old English yoeman — I’ll take care of him.” ‘ ' 

“We will all take care of him, Tom ; it i-s our duty.” 

if* Our duty shall be done.” ■ ' r 

“ I am in earnest, Tom — -in sober earnest.” 


CRUEL LONDON, 


43 


“ So am L” 

“ If your mother had a head for business, she’d marry 
him to Emily.” 

“ Not while Fred Tavener is above ground.” 

“ Confound Tavener ! he’s no good — a butterfly— a fel- 
low who talks of nothing but good pictures, and does noth- 
ing but paint bad ones.” 

“ Let the yeoman have Patty ? ” 

“ If he will, by all means ; talk to your mother about it. 
I hope she has ordered some good clothes for the child. 
Patty is never sufficiently well dressed.” 

“ Here’s mother ; talk to her yourself, governor, while 
I go and engineer Mr. Kerman.” 

At that moment the unexpected heir was talking to the 
lady whom everybody had settled upon as the heiress.* 

“ I’m sorry that he did it, lass ; Pm sorry.” 

“ I’m glad,” said Jane. 

“ There’s one thing I’m glad about. I towd you as I 
meant to ero away before I knowed what was goin’ to 
happen.” 

“ You did, John.” 

“ I said as I meant to see the world ; I said as I felt like 
a slave as had just got his freedom.” 

“ Yes, that is true, John.” 

“ And you won’t think now as money is takin’ me 
away; you won’t think meanly of me as you might ha’ 
done if you hadn’t known aforehand that I was goin’ when 
I only expected to go empty-handed ? ” 

“ I have never thought meanly of you, and I’m not 
going to begin now.” 

“ Give me thy hand on that, lass.” 

Jane held out her hand. The young man pressed it 
heartily. 

“ I’m not quite mysen yet,” he said, “ but nowt that 
could ha’ happened would^have altered what j’d made up 
my mind to do-rto see the world, to get out beyond this 
country as I ha’ suffered in and labored in ; to see London, 
and to be summat more than a farm-laborer.” 

“ You ha.v6 always been more than that.” 

“ You’ve thought so, perhaps, but nobody else has.” 

“It was not enough for me to think so. No, lad, thou’rt 
right, I make no doubt ; go thy own w'ays — Uncle Martin 
is best judge. I hope tliou’lt like the world, and be hap^y 
in thy freedom.” 


44 


CRUEL LONDON-, 


A quick aud peremptory knock at the door interrupted 
the conversation. 

“Mr. Tom Sleaford is waiting to speak to you, sir.” 

“ I’m coming, tell him. Good-by for the present, Jane. 
I’m going to London in the morning.” 

“ Good-by, Jack, good-by ! ” 

The girl pressed her hand upon her breast as the door 
closed and left her alone. It was well for her that tears 
came to her relief. While she sat rocking herself to and 
fro, and sobbing as if her heart were breaking, Mr. John 
Kerman was listening to Tom Sleaford’s plans for showing 
him London. 

“My dear sir,” said uncle Martin’s heir, “ you couldn’t do 
me a greater favor. I meant to go to London on my own 
liook ; but to go with you — a gentleman as knows all about 
it — why, it’s the first time that I’ve thought what money 
can do, and how; useful it is ; because you wouldn’t have 
asked Jack Kerrhan, farm-laborer, to go wi’ you.” 

“ I would, indeed. I like you ! ” said Tom. “ There’s no 
humbug about me.” 

“ Well, never mind ; I’m right glad to be one of your 
company to London, and if I’m rough, you mun look ower 
it; I’m nowt but a slave that’s just gotten his liberty.” 


BOOK II 


CHAPTER 11. 

MR. JOHN KERMAN COMMENCES «IS LONDON EDUCATION. 

\ 

What a wonderful world it was, this London of which 
Jack Kerman had heard so much ! 

The streets were literally paved with gold. - They were 
ablaze with shops full of wonders of wealth;^ ^^How splendid 
it is to be rich ! Aladdin did not enjoy his newly-dis- 
covered power more than Squire Kerman did. The Slea- 
fords called him Squire— the Lincolnshire Squire. 

How lucky to have such friends as the Sleafords ! What 


CRUEL LONDON. 


45 


a genial, hearty good fellow Jeremiah Sleaford was, with 
his breezy manner and his business-like habits! And 
Emily, she appeared to the Squire to be the perfection of a 
lady. Patty was a gentle, doll-like girl, who seemed to him 
born to be taken care of and petted. Mrs. Sleaford was a 
dear old lady. As for Tim Maloney, he was a jewel ; and 
nothing had delighted the young Squire more than Slea- 
ford’s ready kindness in transferring Tim’s services to liim. 
But the whole conduct of the Sleafords was goodness itself. 
He would never forget it ; and no sacrifice was sufiicient to 
demonstrate his gratitude. 

They had insisted that he should make his home at 
Fitzroy Square. He had his own rooms, apart from the 
family, so that he was perfectly free to come and go as he 
pleased. Old Sleaford would have persisted in his remain- 
ing his guest for good, without a thought of payment, but 
Kerman was. not a sensitive man, and he had no compunc- 
tion about offering to pay for his board and lodging. Mr. 
Sleaford had therefore consented, under great pressure, 
that his wife should receive a quarterly cheque to cover the 
cost of Mr. Kerman’s entertainment. There never was a 
more united family. The occasion , of the Martin legacy, 
and the fortunate launching of the Cemetery Company, had 
made the Fitzroy mansion happy. The domestic wheels 
ran along gayly. Smith Brothers -were ostentatiously paid 
the moment they sent in their bill. Emily rarely .lost her 
temper now. Patty was no longer cynical. Mrs. Sleafo^’d 
gave “ At Homes.” They drove and rode in the Park. 
To.m had a lucrative position in an Asphalte Paving Com- 
pany in the city. He had chambers in Regent Street, so 
that Kerman could enjoy the exclusive services of Tim 
Maloney. This was an arrangement effected by Tom before 
he left Manor Farm. He had long desired a separate 
establishment, and it was agreed between father and son 
that Tom, at large on his own account, would be likely to 
impress the squire more favorably than Tom at home living 
on his family. 

All this was very pleasant, , Despite his dialect and 
his rough ways, the Squire found himself the centre of 
a con-spiracy to please him. He did not dream that this 
was part of a broader conspiracy to capture him body and 
soul. 

“ He’s fair game,” Mr. Sleaford had said to his son. 
“We must get him into our companies, and make the most 


46 


CRUEL LONDON. 


of him. It’s all in his own interest. He had much better 
get twenty per cent for his money than five.” 

“ You’re right, governor,” Tom had replied ; “ he’s the 
biggest fish we hafe hooked for some time.” 

“Don’t speak of him in that cold-blooded way, Tom. 
Regard him as a brother. You have a right to consider 
him in that light ; but for him you would have been old 
Martin’s heir.” 

“ Make him useful,” Jeremiah had said to Mrs. Sleaford. 
“ Tom will take him to his tailor’s and have him properly 
dressed. He will look a county gentleman to perfection. 
Take him about, or let him take you about; show him to 
our friends, and exhibit him to the tradespeople — in short, 
make him useful.” 

“I will, Jeremiah dear, I will,” said the faded wife of his 
bosom, dim dreams of splendor flitting through her inild 
constitution. 

“ And marry him to Eniily or Patty, that is your ])ro- 
gramme. If Eniily can be got to throw over that painter 
fellow, let Emily have him ; if not, he must marry Patty.” 

“ Yes, certainly love,” said Mrs. Sleaford. 

Mr. Kerman could not have fallen into better hands for 
varnishing. Emily, without seeming to do it, began 
promptly to cure him of his dialect. Patty instructed him 
in ices and gloves. Mrs. Sleaford went shopping with him. 
Old Sleaford showed him the city, its banks, its financial 
chamber^^ its thousand and one ways of making money. 
Tom introduced him to the best cigar store, the pleasantest 
bar, the finest restaurant, the fastest night-house, and the 
most accommodating banker. The clothes, sticks, whips, 
hats, rings, pins, and other trifles that poured into Fitzroy 
Square soon rendered it necessary that an additional room 
should be added to the young Squire’s apartments. In less 
than a month he was one of the best-dressed men in London. 
Mr. Snip had shown a fine taste in the decoration of the 
county gentleman. The make-up was perfect. A theat- 
rical costumier could not have turned John Kerman out 
more characteristically. A son of the soil. Snip had dressed 
him up to the part of a country gentleman, and he looked 
like a young lord who was too fond of horses and hunting, 
and the other pastimes of a lord of broad acres. Kerman 
was handsome. He had a ruddy fair complexion, bright 
gray eyes, brown curly hair, a broad manly chest, and there 
was a masculine swing in his gait, His favorite suit was 


/ 


CRUEL LONDON. 47 

black and wliite checked trousers, small in pattern, and 
rather tight about the leg ; a black shooting-coat; a white- 
spotted blue necktie, and a tall hat. It was siu-prising how 
quickly he fell into the habit of his new clothes and his nev7 
condition. There was nobody to laugh at him. London did 
not know of his humble origin. In the Marsh, they would 
have laughed at the grub with butterfly’s wings. They 
would have roughly criticised his hat, his^oat, an«? his clean 
linen. The Sleafords Jgnored the past altogether. They 
never seemed to remember that Jack had been any other 
than a fine gentleman. 

As for London, it was delighted with the newcomer. He 
was rich. What did it matter that he pronounced his vow- 
els full and round. London liked it. London was charmed 
with the north-country dialect. A liberal order given in the 
Lincolnshire vernacular had a special grace of its own. How 
kind everybody was! Ho heir just come into his heritage 
had ever enjoyed possession more than Mr. John Kerman. 
Ho stories he had heard of London came up to the reality. 
Milk and honey! — it was a land flowing with champagne, 
musical with fun and frolic. It was a world of delight, a 
city of theatres, clubs, hotels, music-halls, smoking saloons, 
and beautiful women. If he had only obtained his first ex- 
perience of it as Jack Kerman, the ambitious farm-laborer, 
bent on seeing the wmrld and winning his own independence 
in it, that would have opened his eyes, and enabled him 
when he had earned the right to have luxurious tastes, to 
discover a real basis of pleasure. As it was, he was a fish 
who never suspected a hook or an artificial bait ; a bird in- 
nocent of springs and lime; a man with his heart on his 
sleeve, and his purse unlocked and wide open. 

Ho wonder the cruel city was delighted with Mr. John 
Kerman. It set traps for him at all points. It smiled and 
cheated him. It conspired against him in every way. It' 
traded on his generosity ; it coined his tenderest feelings ; 
it turned his vanity to account; it made money out of his 
pride; it flattered him and robbed him; it captured his 
senses, and plundered him even while he slept. It smiled 
on him wdth the wiles of a harlot, and it fleeced him as 
heartlessly. But it was all brightness and sunshine and 
gayety to the young Squire, just come into his title, his 
money, and his new clothes. He never suspected the cruel, 
stony-hearted jade, London, when she caressed him and 
vowed he had won her heart, and that she loved him. 


48 


GRUEL LONDON. 


“Will you come to the Footlights Club to-night?” said 
Tom, after a little dinner at the Soho which had sud- 

denly become famous for its special French cuisine. 

“ Yes, anywhere you like,” said the Squire, “ only I hope 
it’s English ; I doan’t care much for these French kickshaws 
and things.” 

“Oh, its English enough, the Footlights; a dramatic 
and literary club. I gave a fellow a fiver to write me a 
farce and put my^name on it just to admit me. You have 
to c]o something of that sort, you know ; queer dogs ! I got 
in through a man who writes leaders on a financial paper; 
he gave us a lift in cemeteries and asphaltes.” 

“ Ah, I see. You know' a sight of rum spots and folks,” 
said the Squire. 

“ Yes, I’ve seen a thing or tw'o, and so shall you. Jack, 
my boy, before I’ve done with you.” 

Twelve o’clock was the time when' the Footlights began 
to be lively. 

It w^as situated down one of those long Strand passages 
which, in the old days, looked upon the river. They had 
almost to grope their w^ay along the narrow desoent, amidst 
miscellaneous odors that would not have disgraced 
Cologne. Presently they entered another passage, climbed 
ujy an ill-lighted staircase and found themselves in the murky 
quarters of the Footlights. The room w'as neither spacious 
nor imposing. It was full of people and full of smoke. 

“ All celebrated in their way,” said Tom. “ ISFot ex- 
actly shining lights in their several professions, but distin- 
guished once, and likely to be to the fore again at some 
future day.” 

The Squire took a seat beside the president, a pale, in- 
tellectual looking young man, who wms supposed to be the 
most humorous of the clever writers on the Cricket., a 
^satirical journal wdiich kept dramatic art in its proper 
groove, and influenced the destinies of political parties at 
St. Stephen’s. 

“ The melancholy looking gentleman in paper collar is 
one of the comic artists of the CrickeW whispered Tom ; 
“and that noisy fellow' who is talking w'hile he eats, is the 
critic of the Pandemonium., 2, fellow, a member of 

bigger clubs than this, but he likes the Footlights, it's so 
genial and homely.” 

Some of the Footlighters wmre eating tripe and onions; 
others were devouring chops ; some were smoking pipes, 


49 


CR UEL L ON DON. 

some cigars. Beer and spirits were tlie popular drinks. 
Everybody was talking to everybody else. Presently Mr. 
Brayford appeared upon the scene. 

“Wayho! Hurrah!” shouted tlie entire club. “Wayho 
for Brayford ! Tlie Chaunt ! ” 

“Waho,” said Tom, “is the watchword of the club. 
You know, Brayford. The Chaunt is the club song and 
chorus.” 

While Tom was speaking, the club, as if in one voice, 
sang the refrain of “ Old Brown’s Daughter,” in which, as 
one man, the club declared that old Brown’s daughter was 
a proper sort of girl. They wished they’d been a lord 
mayor, a marquis, or an earl, then blow them if they 
wouldn’t have married old Brown’s girl. 

Mr. Brayford was then conducted by the pale, intellec- 
tual president to a piano but dimly visible through the smoke 
in an obscure corner of the room, whereupon he proceeded 
in the gentlest way to harmonize that comical chaunt. The 
music-hall poet who gave “ Old Brown’s Daughter ” to the 
world had contrived to wed the words to a delicious 
melody, which Mr.’ Brayford modulated and variegated 
with a quaint, humorous instrumentation that was as novel 
as it was fascinating. The lament over the impossibility, 
etc., of securing the affections of old Brown’s, daughter en- 
tered various phases. Now it would be sad and wailing in i 
a minor key, soft, plaintive, tender ; then it would grow 
defiant in its praises of her; and anon, in loud, thundering 
tones, hammered out of a major. key, it would declaim the 
club’s passionate love and its final declaration of its marital 
intentions in the event of its attainingto a sufficient dignity 
of title and wealth. 

When Mr. Brayford rose from the piano everybody 
w'anted to know where he had been, and what he thought 
of himself for leaving the club a whole week without min- 
strelsy. 

“ He is called the aged minstrel of the club,” whispei’ed 
Tom, though he isn’t forty, for that matter.” ^ 

“ But he’s the chap that came down about the tomb- 
stone ? ” . . • 

“ Of course he is.” 

“ What a rum go.” 

“He is the managing director of our Blackheath Ceme- 
tery Company,” 

“ You don’t say so.” 


50 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“ And what is more, he writes comic songs and farces, 
and is the j oiliest and best fellow out. Are you not, old 
boy ? ” 

Brayford came up as Tom was speaking. 

“ Am I not what? ” the young-old man asked, in a bland, 
amiable voice. 

“ An old scoundrel.” 

“ Yes, of course I am.” 

“ Then let me introduce a young scoundrel to you — 
Squire Kerman.” 

“Why, good gracious! Mr. Kerman, how do you do? 
Welcome to London, sir ! Welcome to the great city! 
And I hope it’ll treat you well. You’ve got to keep your 
weather eye open up here, sir. Mr. Sleaford will tell you 
that; he knows — none better, none better. Welcome to 
the Footlights ! ’• 

“Thank you, Mr. Brayford ; you’re very good.” 

“Have you introduced Mr. Kerman to the boys, sir ? ” 

“ No.” 

“ Will you permit me ? ” 

“ By all means.” 

Whereupon Mr. Brayford commenced.... a tour of the 
club; and before the night was over Squire Kerman made 
the acquaintance of a gentleman destined to become his 
4 agent in transactions of importance in the destinies of Fitz- 
roy Square and Manor Farm. 


CHAPTER II. 

THE FOOTLIGHTS AND THE HARDWICK. 

The tour of the Footlights Club illustrated Mr. Bray- 
forti’s varied experience. He introduced the Squire right 
and left with a peculiar and special frankness. 

“ Mr. Snallie — Mr. Kerman, a friend of Mr. Sleaford’s. 
If Snallie wants to borrow a fiver, let him have it; you’ll 
get off cheap.” 

Brayford. Oh, fie ! ” exclaimed Snallie, an old gentle- 
man, with a curl on each side of his face, and a pair of long 
hands in a pair of still longer gloves. 


CRUEL LONDON. 5 } 

“Mr. Macjew — Mr. Kerman, a friend of Mr. Sleaford’s, 
from Lincolnshire.” 

“ How are you, sir? Proud to meet any friend of Slea- 
ford’s.” 

“ If Macjew wants you to put a thousand or two into 
his new city paper, don’t.” 

“ Bad advice, believe me,” responds Macjew, a cleanly- 
shaven, well-dressed gentleman. “A thousand in rny new 
city paper would pay you in two years five hundred per 
annum.” 

“ Mr. Brayford is joking, I expect, in warning me,” said 
Kerman, anxious to be polite. 

“ Quite so,” said Brayford. “ Here is another gentle- 
man against whom I must warn you. Mr. Slowcalm, allow 
me to present to you Mr. Kerman, a county gentleman who 
is doing London, but who isn’t to be done himself, mind 
you.” 

Slowcalm smiled. 

“ How do you do, Mr. Kerman ? Brayford will have 
his little joke, and it always is a little joke.” 

“ He’ll want you to put a few hundred in a travelling 
dramatic company,” said Brayford, as they passed on. 
“ Don’t ; Slowcalm is a very nice fellow, but the biggest 
humbug out. We have some jolly good fellows in the Foot- 
lights, and we have also some shabby ones ; we have some 
great good men, and some little bad ’uns, Mr. Kerman, and 
you must mind your eye.” 

Brayford’s earnest jesting did not restrain Snallie, Mac- 
jew, and Slbwcalm, from commencing excavations for Ker- 
man. They began to dig pitfalls for him at once. Even 
Sleaford’s careful management did not prevent Slowcalm 
from talking to Kerman of the delights of theatrical life, 
and more particularly of the pleasure of travelling in the 
country with an opera-bouffe troupe— such good company, 
such delightful dinners, and all the while making lots of 
money. / When Kerman said he had had enough of the 
country^ Slowcalm said, Yes; just so ; no doubt the coun- 
try was not equal to London ; the metropolis was, of course, 
the place ; all the world came to London ; an opera-bouffe 
company at a West End theatre, that was the thing; he 
had been in management twenty years, and had sung all 
the baritone music in the leading o})era ; and, as for money, 
he made £20,000 out of “ Venice the Beautiful,” “ The Great 
Mogul,” and “ The Delights of Madagascar.” Would he 


52 


CRUEL LONDON. 


come and see him at his little place? Yes, John Kerman 
would. He was pleased to hear Slowcalm talk. It seemed 
as if he were speaking fairy tales or romance, he didn’t 
know what, and there was a dazzling confusion about it all 
that gave Jack a vague sensation of delight. 

“Now, look here. Jack, my boy,” said Tom, as they left 
the Footlights; “you must be careful, you know, about 
these fellows. It isn’t that they’re dishonest, they are over 
sanguine ; they believe when they borrow your money that 
they are going to pay it back ; they feel certain when they 
get you into a little spec that you are going to make money 
by it ; there is no harm in your lending a trifle, but when 
you’ve parted with it, think no more about it. If you don’t 
altogether rely on my advice, ask Bradford, he’ll tell you ; 
he’s been through the mill, and he is as odd and Quixotic a 
chap as there is going.” 

Tom did not mind the boys having some of the crumbs 
that dropped between himself and the rich man ; but he 
considered the Squire his own particular and private pre- 
serve, over which nobody was to shoot without his license 
and permission. 

“ All right, Tom. Thou’rt full of knowledge o’ these 
things ; but it does seem a pity that Mr. Slowcalm should 
be wasting his time. And what a voice he has got ! Why, 
he sang that song, “ The Englishman,” well. I’ve never 
heard anything sung so well, and a chap like that ought to 
be helped.” 

“ Well, yes, he’s not a bad sort, Slowcalm ; but no mat- 
ter how much money he makes, he. always loses it. How- 
ever, I’ve given you the tip. Jack — be cautious, my boy. 
Don’t go into any big thing without me. If you want to 
speculate I’ll show you the way.” 

“ Speculate !” said Kerman, stopping his friend under 
a lamp-post. “Yes I do mean to speculate, Mr. Tom Slea- 
ford, but not in that way — no ; what my mind is set on, if 
I must speculate^ is a bit of racin’. That’s the thing, lad 
for me. I always used to have a shillin’ or two on Lincoln 
Handicap, St. Leger, and Derby, and I know summat about 
horses ; I’d like to buy a horse and ride him myself at a 
steeple-chase — eh, lad ! that’s the time of day.” 

“ But think of the risk.” 

“Blow the risk ! ” said the Squire. 

“ Jack, you’re on.’’ 

“On what?” 


CkUEL LONDON. 


58 


“ You’ve had one glass too many.’* 

“ What do you mean ? ” 

“ What I say.” 

“ That I am drunk ? ” * 

“ No, not exactly that.” 

“ If any man says I am drunk, he’s a 

“ No,” no, said Tom, taking the Squire’s arm ; “nothing 
of the kind. Come along, old boy ; we’ll go and put a hun- 
dred on the Leger.” ^ 

“ Riglit,” said Kerman, who by this time had begun to 
stagger in his gait. 

“I don’t know much about racing, but I'm willing to 
learn : you shall teach me.” 

“ Aye, that’s it. I’ll teach thee. Thou’s gotten to make 
me a fine gentleman, and I’ll show thee how to know a 
horse, when thou sees one.” 

“ Here we are, then. We’ll just inquire for Mr. Roper, 
and he’ll put us in the right way,” said Tom, pausing on 
the steps of the Hardwick Club, a quiet-looking establish- 
ment off the Strand, in the neighborhood of Covent Garden. 

’ “ Yes,” the porter said, “ Mr. Roper is in.” 

“Roper’s a friend of the governor’s, a clever young 
fellow — combines racing with the law. He is one of our 
consulting solicitors in the Asphalte Company. This is his 
favorite club.” 

“ Mr. Sleaford, you’rg a right down chap,” said the 
Squire, who was soon shaking hands with Mr. Roper, a 
handsome, well-dressed young man, with the manners of a 
courtier. 

. “ Proud to know you, sir,” he said, taking the Squire’s 
hand. 

Tom had whispered a few words to Roper. 

“ Waiter, a little supper for three, deviled kidneys and 
a bone,” said Roper. 

It was the eve of the Leger. The ‘Hardwick’ was 
crowded with men who were all talking at once. They 
had books in their hands, in which they continually made 
notes. In the centre of a large room, into which the 
Squire could catch a glimpse from the outer chamber, 
where Roper had received Tom, there were high office- 
desks upon which telegrams were fixed. Messages contin- 
ued to arrive from time to time. They were surrounded 
at once by the occupants of the room. Silence for a 


64 


CRUEL LONDON. 


moment attended their inspection of the flimsy paper. Then 
the Babel of tongues broke out afresh. 

“ A busy scene, Mr. Kerman. It is our Betting Ex- 
change, and to-flight is our exciting time.” 

“Yes, I see,” said the Squire, rubbing his eyes and 
making an effort to pull himself together. “ Reminds me 
of tlie ring at Lincoln races.” 

“There is a good deal in common between the two 
scenes. This way, gentlemen ; we will sup away from the 
noise of the saloon.” 

“ But are we not trespassing on you at a time when 
you ” 

“Not at all,” said Mr. Roper, stopping him in the 
niid*st of an apologetic speech, “ not at all.” 

It was a pleasant little supper. The style of it, and the 
superior manner of Mr. Roper overcame the Squire. He 
gradually got sober under the Hardwick treatment, and. 
became painfully conscious of his dialect, his natural un- 
couthness, and his utter ignorance of the world. He 
listened to Roper, and tried to speak like him. He struggled 
with his thees and thous, and became difiident and embar- 
rassed. He made a few remarks about horses, which 
Roper declared to be excellent, and full of shrewd judg- 
ment. As a favor to Mr. Kerman he undertook to put five 
hundred pounds on the race, out of which Tom was to 
have two ponies, otherwise fifty pounds, if the Squire 
should win. 

Early in the morning, when Tom Sleaford bade his 
friend good night at the corner of Fitzroy Square, Mr. 
Kerman detained him for a short time with some perfectly 
sober reflections upon his position and feelings. 

“ I am jolly, and all that, but it’s a sort of dream, and I 
seem out of place, just as a fellow does who’s got out of 
the kitchen into the parlor, and doesn’t know how to take 
a seat rightly. If I’d a walked into Mester Dymoke’s fine 
house, as was member o’ Parliament when I was old 
Martin’s farmin’ man, and had a gone in and sat down by 
pianner, I couldn’t a felt more out of place than I’ve felt 
to-night.” 

“Nonsense, my dear Jack, you’re out of sorts; you’ll 
soon be all right.” 

“ I know, I know,” said the Squire. “ I mean to be all 
right; don’t think as I’m giving up ; I’m going to learn all 
these things that makes the difference between you and 


/ 


CRUEL LONDOU. 


55 


me; I’m going to set mysen right down |to it; don’t you 
make any mistake, I’m not a-goin’ to have folks ashamed < of 
me, as you was to-night. I know I was a bit drunk at 
first, jbut I^ could hear mysen’^ talking aftendbat, and it 
- sounded as if a cart-horse had got shoved by mistake into 
the same .stable as thoroughbreds. ~ Nay, lad^J know I’m 
not a fool ; but there, wait ,a bit, I’ll show thee whether I 
can’t miend. j I’m- groomed up and put into best stall, and 
left to feed (^till-my coat’s smooth and shining' and I think 
I’ve gotten some good blood in me, though I don’t know 
yet,, if I be mistaken or ,not. I’ll tell you soon. Good- 
night, lad ; day will conie fthat you wain’t be ashamed on 
me,” , \ 

“It has come. Jack ; I’m not ashamed of you.” 

“ li know — money keeps my head up; nay, I don’t 
mean as it does with you, but I mean to make you respect 
me as if I had no money. I want folks to shake hands and 
how-do-you-do me as if. I had no 'brass to speak on, and 
they was glad to see me all the same.” 

Good-jiight, then, unless you want to go home with 
the milk ; it’s dayliglit. Jack.” 

“ W^ll, it don’t matter. I’ve got key, and I needn’t get 
up till dinner-time. However, good-night, lad, thou’rt not 
ashamed of Jack Kerman ? ” i 

“ Ashamed !. I’m proud of you.” 

“ Good-night, Mr. Tom.” 


CHAPTER III. f 

i . 

CAERIAGES AND HORSES, AND PLENTY OP MOJjRT. 

. , 'f 

“ Don’t sound your vowels so much,” said Patty “ that 
is your principal mistake.” 

“My vowels ? ” 

, “ Yes ; your a’s, e’s, i’s, o’s, u’s, and sometimes w’s, and 
v’s.”' 

" “Yes?” 

“Don’t say ‘yo,’ when vou should say ‘you.” 

“ I see.” 


56 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“And don’t put two vowels where there should be only 
one ; don’t say ‘ doant ’ for ‘ don’t,’ and, for that matter, 
rather say ‘ do not ’ than ‘ don’t.’ ” 

“‘Do npt’ for ‘doant;’ ah, it does make a differ- 
ence.” 

“And don’t say ‘ah’ when you mean ‘yes;’ and 
‘ make ’ is not pronounced ‘ mek.’ ” 

“ Good ; it’s like cornin’ to schule bein’ with you.” 

“ ‘ School,’ not ‘ schule ’ and ‘ beina:,’ not ‘ bein’.’ ” 

“ Just so.” 

Patty, in a pinky-white silk dress, was painting a pinky, 
white water-color, delineating the glories of a pinky-white 
sunset. The squire, in a brown velvet 'jacket and crimson 
slippers, was sitting by her side and gazing into the fire. 
The room was called the studio. It had an outlook into 
the square, where the autumn leaves were blowing about in 
the wind. 

“ Do you know I had got it into my head that folk were 
ashamed on me,” he said. 

“ ‘ People,’ not ‘ folk,’ responded the artist, “ Ashamed 
‘ of me,’ not ‘ on me.’ ” 

She spoke as if she were reading a lesson in which she 
felt no interest whatever. 

“Yes; well, never mind that.” 

“ But you told me to stop you every time you made a 
mistake.” 

“Well, yes, thank you; ‘people,’ not ‘ folk,’ and all 
that. Don’t mind it just now.” 

“ Go on, then.” 

“ I saw one man laughin’ — I mean laughing — at me, and 
I seemed as if I’d got into wrong box like — a mongrel wi’ 
high-bred uns.” 

“ Must I correct you ? ”" 

“No, not now, I just wanted to ax you, because you 
are so kind like, and not so proud as some, if you think 
folk — people I mean — are ashamed of me ? ” 

“Nobody is ashamed of anybody, if they are handsome 
and have plenty of money.” 

“Handsome?” 

..“Yes, I call you handsome. Even Emmy said you 
looked splendid on horseback in the Row, yesterday.” 

Patty spoke in measured tones, without emphasis, and 
with a complete absence of inflexions rising or falling. 

“ Did she ? Ah, that were tailor’s doing.” 


CRUEL LONDON, 


57 


“ The tailor did not make your face, nor teach you how 
to ride.” 

“ No ; but it were a rare and beautiful horse.” 

“ Then you don’t think you are handsome ? ” 

“ I wish I could speak fine, as they. say in Lincolnshire ; 
though they’d have a great laugh if they heard me a-try in g 
it.” 

“ You did not answer my question.” 

“Oh, if I think I’m handsome?” he said, laughing, and 
looking up at his questioner. “ I never thought about it.” 

If you had been a fine gentleman, you would have paid 
me a compliment when I said that.” 

“ Ah, yes, I see you are trying me ; but I’m not a fine 
^gentleman, you see, and I’m too shamefaced to pay compli- 
ments to a lady.” 

“ You should practise — practise on me.” 

“■What shall I say?” 

“Just what you think — and a little more.” 

“ I think you are a good-natured, nice little lady.” 

“Yes ; but you should say something about my eyes or 
my expression.” 

“ I cannot frame it in iny mind yet ; we’ll leave that till 
next lesson. Miss Patty. You know Mr. Roper? ” 

“Yes; he’s a darling.” 

“You like him ? ” 

“ Ever so much.” 

“He’s got fine manners, if you like.” 

“ Beautiful.” 

Miss Emily Sleaford entered the room. 

“ Good-evening, Mr. Kerman.” 

“ Good-evening, Miss Sleaford.” 

Kerman rose to his feet. 

“ Don’t let me disturb you,” ^id the new-comer. “ Tom 
tells me you have been buying some race-horses, Mr. Ker- 
man.” , •! 

“Yes, I have ; I like race-horses.” 

“ I am glad you 'have bought what you like.” 

“Yes?” * 

“ Because you have also, I hear, been patronizing art.” 

“ In what way? ” 

“ What do you think Mr. Kerman has done?” 

“I don’t know,”, said Patty, still painting her pink and 
white sunset. 

“ Tom and he called at Mr. Tavener’s studio, and Mr. 


68 


CRUEL LONDON. 


Kerman bought his Thames picture, and it has just come as 
a present to mamma.” 

“ Oh, don’t mention it. I could see on Thursday at 
the play that you were fond of him like, and it was Tom that 
put me up to buying the picture. Tom always knows how 
to do the right thing.” 

“ It was very kind of you, Mr. Kerman — too kind.” 

“No, no; I feel honored if you are pleased.” 

“ And you said you did not know how to compliment a 
lady,” said Patty,as if she were reading the sentences out of 
a book. 

“ You must know. Miss Sleaford,” said Kerman, “ that 
you’re sister’s learnin’ me how to talk your London liugo^ 
and giving me lessons in manners, like.” 

“ I hope she’s a pleasant schoolmistress,” said Emmy, 
smiling. 

“That’s just what I said : it’s like cornin’ to school.” 

“ You said schule before,” observed Patty. 

“ Patty! ” exclaimed Miss Sleaford, reprovingly. 

“That’s right, I did ; I said schule. You’ll have me 
shaking hands, and saying ‘How do you do!’ and speak- 
ing fine, so that they’ll never know me in Lincolnshire 
soon,” said the young man. “Money, they say’s got ’ its 
responsibilities, and that’s one on ’em, I suppose. You’ve 
got to be fine as well as look it, though they say down in 
the Marsh as ‘ Hansom is as hansom does.” 

“Yes, that’s a country proverb,” said Emmy. “It’s 
been out of date in London ever since I can remember.” 

“ Still there’s summat in it.” 

“ Everything, I think,” said Miss Sleaford ; “ but I don’t 
know any one else who thinks so, except Mr. Tavener, per- 
haps.” 

“You must take the #orld as it is,” chimed in Patty. 
“ It’s no good trying lobe anybody unless you have car- 
riages and horses and plenty of money.” 

“That’s where I haven’t got bearing of things yet,” said 
Kerman. “It seems to me, as I’ve said before, it’s no good 
taking a cart-horse, dressin' him in fine harness, and puttin’ 
him into a drag and makin’ out as he’s used to it, and 
matches t’other three of the team.” 

“No,” said Miss Sleaford, promptly, “but it may be that 
the cart-horse was originally intended for the Park,* and wasS 
made to trudge along the road instead ; it may be that the 
cart-horse, with a little training, will prove himself to be 


CRUEL LONDON. 59 

quite the equa* of horses that have never had to rough it at 
all.’’ 

“Thank you,” said the Squire, “ that’s me. I know ex- 
actly what you mean, and you know what Imean; I’m 
tryiii’ to find out what I^ere really intended for.” 

“ For Patty,” Mr. Jeremiah Sleaford thought, as he en- 
tered the room. “ For Parliament, Kerman,” be said : 
we’ll have you returned for a Lincolnshire borough, native 
and to the manor born, and all that kind of thing ; can- 
didate to represent the soil on which he was born goes 
down wonderfully. Now, Patty, away with Art; early 
dinner to-day, because of the opera. Are you dressed, 
Emmy? Kerman, a treat for you to-night — Titiens in a 
new role^^ 

“ Thank yo,” said the Squire, “ I left the city an hour 
earlier than usual, on purpose.” 

“Mr. Roper called to ask if he might take mamma and 
me to the theatre,” said Patty. 

“Mr. Roper!” exclaimed the old man. “I don’t care 
for you to be going about with Roper. lie’s a gentleman, I 
know, and clever at making money ; and our dear friend 
the Squire likes him ; but really, you know, Patty ” 

“ I like Mr. Roper,” said Patty, with a pinky-white 
blush, laying aside her pinky-white sunset, and speaking in 
her calm, iinimpassioned way which to Roper was so de- 
lightfully distingue. 

“ Yes, yes ; I know we all like him.” 

“ And 1 want to go to the theatre.” 

“Well, well; see what mamma says — Wilful, you see, 
Kerman, wilful, but a good girl, and, like ail good girls, 
likes her own way.” 

“ But you can’t have your own way in this life,” he said, 
when Miss Emily and Mr. Kerman had left the room, “ and 
you can’t have your way in regard to Roper. Now listen 
to me. Roper is a schemer; he hasn’t a penny, and if he 
had he’d squander it ; he never pays anybody.” 

“ We used not to pay anybody.” 

“ Will you listen, Patty ? ” 

“Yes, father.” 

“You know I speak for your own good ; you know I 
would make any sacrifice for you.” 

“I don’t want you to do it,” 

“ Because you don’t understand your own welfare. 
Roper is a spendthrift, a blackleg.” 


60 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“ Oh, don’t call names; I shall cry if you do.’ 

“Then listen, love, listen to me calmly. Mr. Kerman— 
Squire Kerman, as I prefer to have him called — is rich, 
Avealthier than he thinks; he is a good-looking young man ; 
he can settle five thousand a }'ear upon you, and spend 
another five in carriages and horses and servants for ' you. 
Do you understand what I mean ? ” 

“Yes.” 

“ If he were to die or become bankrupt, you would have 
five thousand a year of your own — perhaps more, do you 
see ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ If you married Roper, he would pawn your jewels ; 
and if he died, you would be left to live iu a garret, without 
■ sixpence.” 

“ But you would help me ? ” suggested the pinky-white 
student of Art and Nature. 

“If I could. The chances are I couldn’t. You know 
what struggles we’ve had. You know how the bailiffs have 
been here; how your ma has been insulted by the trades- 
people in her own house ; how we have had to pretend we’ve 
had a beautiful dinner off a bit of cold mutton served up by 
Tim, as if it were a banquet ? ” 

“Yes ; but that’s all over now,” 

. “ For the present.” 

“ Only for the present ? ” 

“ Perhaps only.” 

“ Mr. Roper’s so nice, and he dresses so well.” 

“You wouldn’t like him in a workhouse suit, I expect? ” 
“No.” 

You wouldn’t like when you had married him to be 
turned out of your house and home, your diamond earrings 
and your gold watch sold to pay his debts ? ” 

“ No, no.” 

“ You would prefer to have a house in Mayfair, and be 
able to go to the Academy, and have paragraphs in the 
papers that you had given three thousand guineas for a pic- 
ture by Landseer, and be able to receive your pa and ma in 
grand style, and patronize Mr. Tavener, for 1 suppose it’s 
no good trying to bring Emmy to her senses.” 

“Yes, dear, yes, I should like that; but why don’t you 
make Emmy marry the Squire ? ” 

“Because you see — well, the fact is, my dear child, I 
don’t think he cares for Emmy. I know he cares for you 


CRUEL LONDON. 


61 


— am sure of it ; and Emmy was not born to take life 
easy, n<5r were you, Patty. You have always taken trouble 
impatiently, and you would never do to encounter poverty ; 
no, I cannot think of Mr. Roper for you. Your mother says 
she does not think you care about him ; do you ? ” 

“ A little.” 

“ Only a little ? ” 

“ He’s agreeable, and he talks well, and he is very fond 
of me.” 

“ Yes; but life is real, life is earnest, Patty; and you 
must not take husbands because they talk well and are fond 
of you. Mr. Kerman will talk well enough soon. You must 
learn to love him, to regard yoursfelf as his helpmeet in the 
disposition of his property ; you must consider how you 
can best spend his money for him, how you will have his 
carriages painted, where you will spend the autumn, how 
many parties you will give in the season, who shall be your 
jeweller, and all that kind of thing, don’t you know. There, 
come along ; dress for dinner now, and the opera. I fold 
your mother I would arrange it all for you ; and Emmy will 
go with her and Mr. Roper to the theatre; you and I and 
the Squire to the opera. That’s a good girl, it’s father’s pet, 
it’s father’s hope, isn’t it ? ” 

“Yes,” said Patty, submitting to a paternal kiss. 

“ And you’ll try and give up all thoughts of Roper ? 
Your mother said she was sure you would if I asked you.” 

“I’ll try.” said Patty. 

“ And you won’t be unkind to the Squire ? ” 

“ No ; I’ll be kind to him.” 

“ Not too kind, of course ? ” 

“ No.” 

“ Don’t let him think we wish you to marry him.” 

“ No.” 

“Your mother will explain; we should like him to pro- 
pose as soon as possible.” 

“ Without asking your permission ? ” 

“ You will tell him to Mo that. You must consult your 
mother now.” 

“ Poor Mr. Roper, he will be so unhappy ! ” 

“ Pooh, pooh, nonsense I Don’t think of him ; he won’t 
mind.” 

“ Won’t he ? If he does not I shall be very miserable.” 

“ There, there, say no more about it, I know you will 


CRUEL LONDON. 


62 

do what pa and ma wish, and what is best for all parties. I 
know you will wait, dear. Now, promise me.” 

“ Yes, I will try.” 

The clash and hum of the dinner-gong, a fine example of 
Chinese manufacture from the Baker Street Bazaar, broke 
in upon the interesting dialogue. 

“Dinner! Bless me! There, be quick, dear, and we 
will wait for yon.” 

Mrs. Sleaford appeared at the door in black velvet and 
diamonds.” 

“ It is all settled, my love,” said Mr. Sleaford. “ Kiss 
our dear chid ; she has consented to all we wish.” 

“ Bless you, dear,” exclaimed Mrs. Sleaford, in the same 
measured, neutral tones as those which were characteristic 
of Patty; “she is my own child, always ready to sacrifice 
herself for others.” 

“Just so,” said Jeremiah. 

And Mrs. Sleaford took Patty to her maternal arms. 


CHAPTER lY. 

THE HAND OF FATE. 

Two years pass swiftly in London. To Squire Kerman 
the time had gone like the wind. 

It is two years since Patty Sleaford made that promise 
to her father, on the last night of the Italian Opera. She 
had done her best to keep it, in spite of the only feeling of 
which her heart seemed capable, a liking for Mr. Ro]ier. 

Mr. John Kerman had benefited by her uncompromising 
tuition, and had never faltered iir his task of fitting himself 
for that sphere of life into which his money had dragged 
him. He was known as the Squire at Epsom and at Don- 
caster. He was voted a good fellow at the Reform and the 
Rag. He had progressed rapidly in all kinds of knowledge. 
He was an authority at the West.minstcr and at Tattersalls.’ 
Mr. Roper was his agent, and the Squire’s training stables 
were already beginning to be talked of, though he had onlv 
bought out a well-known breeder during the previous season. 
Nobody laughed at him now on account of his dialect ; he 


CRUEL LONDON-. 


63 


never met men wlio were ashamed of him. He looked like 
a country gentleman devoted to sport, and the role suited 
his inclinations. 

The Sleafords w^ere very proud of the Squire. He con- 
tinued to dine several days a week at Fitzroy Square. His 
friends wondered that he was contented there. They did 
not know how politic and clever Jeremiah could be. The 
Squire would not have been as happy anywhere else. It 
was home to him ; and he had the use of Tom’s rooms in 
Regent Street, besides a little box down in Surrey, where 
he occasionally spent a day or two. He would sit and roar 
with laughter while Patty talked about his vowels and the 
mistakes of his first days in London. Sometimes he would 
rehearse them. Indeed, he liked the northern dialect, and 
he would often use it for amusement or in the way of badi- 
nage. He wondered if they would know him down in the 
Marsh, and, if they did, what they would think of him. It 
did not occur to him now that they might laugh at him for 
“ talking fine.” The old simile of the cart-horse and the 
thorough-bred was at last used up. He had demonstrated 
to his own satisfaction that he had become quite equal to 
the best stable. He no longer, needed the social help of 
Tom Sleaford ; indeed, he had gone far ahead of Torn. He 
belonged to clubs where Tom could only be admitted as a 
visitor. Tom was glad now and then of the protection of 
the Squire. For although Aspfialtes had prospered, and 
Tom was his own master, and lived in good style, he was 
still “ only somebody in the city,” while Jack Kerman was 
known to be a landed proprietor, and, indeed, was believed 
to have a sufficient territorial influence to make him a catch 
for the Reform. 

London was still a delightful place to Kerman, though 
he had experienced certain and sundry exhibitions of its 
cruelty. Perhaps he had no right to lay his financial mis- 
fortunes at the great City’s door. He had been fleeced by 
Macjew, Snallie & Slowcalm, of course. That was noth- 
ing ; a few thousands covered their defalcations. Mr. 
Fitzherbert Robinson had in the most considerate way 
relieved him of ten thousand pounds ; but the speculation 
looked so promising, and Robinson was so very pressing. 
He had a considerable sum locked up in' Asphaltes and 
Cemeteries ; but his dividends came in regularly, and 
that was all right. Mr. Jeremiah Sleaford had introduced 
him into mining, for it is pretty W’^ell known that, however 


64 


CRUEL LONDON. 


much a man may have suffered in this kind of invest- 
ment, he never leaves it. Mining is like gambling ; the 
taste for it is never wiped out. The exarnj^le of men who 
have made large fortunes is always before the dupe who 
has lost. Mr. Sleaford’s fatherly interest in the Squire 
had been the cause of some of the Lincolnshire money 
being invested in mines. 

If Squire Kerman had a large property, his money 
was pretty well circulated ; it was not allowed to lie 
idle. Mr. Sleaford took care of that. The Squire him- 
self was not economical, either in his tastes or his invest- 
ments. He had the reputation of having won largely on 
the turf. But Mr. Roper could have told the world 
a different tale. Roj^er was his agent — his steward ; he 
had become his second self ; and Roper, while he served 
his chief to the best of his ability, did not like him, and 
on many occasions when he should have combated some 
mistaken idea of the Squire’s, he preferred to let him have 
his own way. Roper was a man of the world, and yet he 
had a weakness that men of the world would, regard as 
utterly unfitting him for the hard business relations 
of life. He loved Patty. Sleaford. His love was not 
a passion: it was something between liking and adinir- 
tion. From his point of view, Patty was the heau ideal 
of a girl to be moulded into the perfection of a wife. 
Calm, passionless, almost languid in her movements and 
expression, she would develop into one of those distin- 
guished women whose dignified repose was in Roper’s 
eyes the one thing desirable in woman. Ho gush, no en- 
thusiasm, taking the world calmly for what it is, never 
getting out of temper with it, and looking at life from a 
business standpoint — that was Roper’s idea of a woman ; 
and Patty had captivated him. He could lose her with- 
out a pang, it is true, but he would have liked her and 
ten thousand pounds a year vastly well. Sleaford had 
been frank with him in explaining his views for Patty ; 
and that young lady had fallen in with the paternal ar- 
rangements so quietly, that Mr. Roper had long since 
ceased to advance his suit. Hot that he loved Patty the 
less for permitting herself to be treated as a chattel ; on 
the contrary, he thought there was something Spartan- 
like in a nature that could sacrifice its own inclinations 
and acknowledge the justice of paternal policy. Some- 
times, however, he felt a little jealous of the Squire. 


CRUEL LONDON. 


65 


There are men who would have taken a sweeping revenge 
upon a rival, placed in Roper’s position ; but Roper was 
fond of speculation, and liked to win even for others as 
well as hiniself. Once or twice, if Kerman had not stood 
between him and Patty, he would have resisted his de- 
cisions in matters of business more earnestly ; but that is 
all. Roper would do nothing wilfully to injure his rival, 
though he bad a secret hope that some day he might 
make a big coKp on his owm account, and then challenge 
the Squire’s pretensions to the hand of Miss Patty Slea- 
ford. 

Lately, however, racing events had not worked out at 
all to his satisfaction, neither had the new stables come up 
to the hopes of Mr. Kerman ; and though the Squire w\as 
flourishing in the opinion of sporting and financial London, 
Manor Farm knew that all this sunshine was not without 
its clouds. Old Jabez Thompson had his eyes upon Ker- 
man ; not that the astute lawyer often went to London, but 
he had agents in town, and the Squire’s closest financial 
secrets were somehow gathered together from time to time 
under Mr. Thompson’s spectacles in the little Lincolnshire 
town. Jabez came and went regularly once a week betw’een 
his office at Burgh and Manor Farm, and Jane Crosby had 
looked particularly grave over the lawyer’s most recent 
piece of news. 

It was immediately after this incident of the lawyer’s 
visit that Tom Sleaford called at Manor Farm. Tom was 
now frequently absent from London for a day or two at a 
time, and it had occurred to him, after his regular Saturday 
to Monday holiday from business, which he observed 
wdth notable exactitude, to make a detour and drop in at 
Manor Farm. He found Miss Crosby in far more comfort- 
able circumstances than he had expected. The farm had 
all its customary air of prosperity, and Miss Crosby did not 
talk as if the future presented any difficulties. He noticed 
that she blushed wlien he spoke of the Squire, who had be- 
come quite a London swell. It also occurred to him that, 
while Jack Kerman had progressed in the art of politeness 
and good manners. Miss Crosby had gone back. Not that 
she was rough or vulgar, but she seemed to speak with a 
broader accent than usual. . She received him, without 
ceremony of any kind, in the kitchen, where the old sheep- 
dog was sleeping on the hearthstone as of yore. Mrs. Kes- 
ter was as plain and outspoken as ever, though she only 


66 


CRUEL LONDON. 


shook her head knowingly w^hen he made pointed inquiries 
about Miss Crosby’s position and prospects. She asked 
after ‘ Flibbertigibbet, that Irish manikin,’ at which Goff 
set up a loud guffaw. Miss Crosby would not talk about 
Kerman, but Tom Sleaford saw that her reticence was the 
result of pride, rather than want of inclination. 

“ We knaw all about him,’ Mrs. Kester said, when, Jane- 
had taken leave of Tom, “ we knaw the ungrateful beggar, 
an’ if the missus were of my mind she’d niver have his ugly 
name mentioned in her hearing. But wait a bit, yo’ll see ; 
ivery (log as his day, and if my missus wanted a hus- 
band, there’s his betters as would jump at her.” 

“ I’m sure I admire her very much,” Tom had said. 

“Do you? Well, I doan’t know as she cares whether 
you do or not, though she was civil enough to you ; but man 
as gets her will have nowt to complain on, I can tell him, 
Mister Londoner, tak’ my word for that.’ 

Tom had gone home thinking of these things ; and, 
turning in his mind the various pictures of womanhood 
which had left more or less transient images in his mind, it 
had occurred to him that Jane Crosby was after all one of 
the handsomest women he had ever seen. In two years she 
had passed from girlhood into womanhood. She was fair, 
round, dimpled, free of limb, graceful in carriage, with a 
frank face, and a bright eye that haunted him as the train 
dashed on towards London. 

Little did the hope and pride of the Sleafords reck of 
the feminine complications that Fate was just then weaving 
for him, the first dramatic act of which was at that very 
moment being inaugurated on the other side of the Atlantic. 
Three thousand miles away, and just stepping on board an 
ocean steamer, a woman was coming to change the des- 
tinies of all the prominent persons in this history. The 
boundless ocean rolled between them, but Fate was bring- 
ing upon the scene of this romance of real life a young 
American girl who had never seen England. By her side 
stood an elderly man, who, in the palmy days of the South, 
had owned five hundred slaves, and lived in luxury and ease 
Born in affluence, his child had now only one ambition in 
life, to solace and comfort her father, a broken-down man, 
on his way to Europe to spend the remainder of his days. 
Wanderers in their o*wm land, they had elected to bury 
their sorrows in the land of the stranger. Friendless and 
alone in the country where they had once been rich and 


CRUEL LONDON. 


67 


blessed with friends, they left America voluntary exiles, 
without adieux. 

. How true it is that the future is veiled to us in mercy, if 
it be that we are predestined to this or to that ! What 
strange, unlooked for, and fatal passes that old man had 
seen could he have traced the future of himself, but more 
])articularly of his child, in the land of which they had read 
so much — the old world on the other side of the Atlantic ! 
It seems to pass belief that the lives of the . Sleafords, the 
history of Manor Farm, the careers of Jane Crosby and 
John Kerman, even the fate of so insignificant a person as 
Brayford, were to be influenced for ever by that solitary, 
picturesque couple standing on the deck of yonder ocean 
steamer, unheeded, unknown, exiles, strangers, whose exist- 
ence had not yet been suggested to a soul of them on this 
side of the ocean in the wildest dreams. 

It is none the less true that the warp of this common- 
place history, the woof of the lives whose destinies are 
growing under our eyes, needs, for its completion, the weft 
of romancers silken threads which are coming with those 
unknown wanderers from the distant shores of Manhattan. 
On the next railway journey which Tom Sleaford takes 
westward to indulge in his weekly holiday from London, he 
is destined, under fatal circumstances, to meet that lovely 
victim of a cruel war, who, while he is thinking of Jane 
Crosby, is nestling by her father’s side under the shadow of 
those stars and stripes, once so loved, now hated with the 
fervor of rebellion. Fate is no respecter of persons. 
Standing darkly by the travellers, the mysterious presence 
stretches forth its directing arm and lays its shadowy hand 
upon Tom Sleaford. 


CHAPTER Y. 

MB. KJBBMAN SEES A PACE IN THE GLASS. 

The truth is, Mr. Kerman had not learned the ways of 
the town so well as he thought he had. He had progressed 
apace, there was no denying that ; but he credited Mmself 
with far greater knowledge that he really possessed. From 


68 


CRUEL LONDON. 


a modest diffidence he had acquired a belief in himself. 
They didn’t take him in any longer. Oh, no ; he had paid 
for his experience. The Footlighters had made their little 
game. Macjevv &> Company, acting upon the principles of 
their order, having bled him to their heart’s content had 
reviled him and persecuted and annoyed him. He rarely 
went into that club now. If he did, he had not only to run 
the gauntlet of the upbraiding eyes of the wronged Mac- 
jews, but he had to submit to the chaff of their friends, by 
whom he had been warned of the pits they dug for him. 
Mr. Brayford had treated him with gentlemanly considera- 
tion, for, despite his eccentricity of manner and the peculiar 
combination of his business, Brayford was a good fellow, 
and a fellow-feeling had been enlisted in Kerman’s interest. 
Brayford was a cynic in his way. His best friends sus- 
pected him of concealing some hidden satire in his pre- 
tended enthusiasm for a three-act epitaph. There was al- 
ways a humorous twinkle in his merry little eyes when he 
talked of the combination of literature aj^d tombstones. 
He didn’t like his business, and yet he was not ashamed of 
it ; but a careful observer might fairly have suspected him 
of chaffing the solemn occup.ation into which his father^s will 
had forced him against his own. 

“ They have had me, bless you,” said Brayford, the 
men who have ‘ limbed * you and cursed the hand that 
fed them ; there is this kind of scoundrels in all our clubs, 
more or less— more, perhaps, than less.” 

Brayfch-d had a habit of stroking his chin and pausing 
when he considered he had made a point in conversation. 

“ Yes, perhaps more than less,” he continued ; “ but 
you cannot say you were not cautioned.” 

“ No, that’s true ; and don’t mind it, my friend, let it 
pass; only it is hard that they should write lies about me 
in their rags of papers, and say I’m running through my 
money and mortgaging my property.” 

“ That is their little pleasant way, Mr. Kerman : they 
try to smother ^hat bit of conscience they have left by 
persuading it that you have done them an injury; and 
they avenge the wrong by saying hard things about you. 
.My dear sir, they twit me now and then with my business, 
though tombstones has given the brutes many a dinner and 
lent them many a fiver.” 

“ You are a funny chap,” said Kerman, looking curiously 
at his friend. 


CRUEL LONDON. 


69 


“Am I ? The Footlighters think so. They don’t like 
me to be in trade. Why, the future generation of scrib- 
blers will be in trade ; at least, those who aren’t in the 
gutter. Literature will be the luxury of the future ; it won’t 
pay anybody. That it is a delightful occupation nobody can 
deny. Why, I feel more pleasure in a five-pound note out 
of a little play or a comic song than five liundred pounds 
out of a mausoleum or a monolith. And I’m beginning to 
experience a real joy in my three-act epitaph. Did I never 
explain it ? ” 

“ No, I think not.” 

“ Three ideas in prose and rhyme ” 

“ Yes, I think I liave heard you describe it at the Ceme- 
tery Board,” said the Squire, interrupting the epitaph-en- 
thusiast. 

“ My own invention. Made it out on the principle of a 
drama — three ideas,, or three figures, if you prefer that de- 
scription. Act I, a sigh ; Act II, a tear ; Act III, a sob. 
Now, whether I write the epitaph or not, I tell my customers 
the same thing ; let there be a sigh, a tear, a sob in it, and 
the thing is constructed on art principles, which are appli- 
cable to all kinds of writing, pathetic, humorous, dramatic, 
or otherwise. There was a time when I used to feel ashamed 
of my business, often addressing myself to myself as the 
First Gravedigger, and all that sort of thing ; but when I 
came to inquire into the origin of our greatest men, and 
when I came to study the true character of genius, which 
dignifies what ever it touches, I gradually saw how the 
literary and dramatic instinct which I always possessed 
might be made available in the elevation and glorification of 
the art of the epitaph, which, until I took it up in earnest, 
had almost become extinct.” 

“ Indeed ! ” remarked Kerman. 

“ Don’t you believe me ? Do you doubt the genuine en- 
thusiasm of the author of the three-act epitaph ? ” 

“No.” 

“ You should hear me discourse upon it to the Wonner. 
He is a believer, I can tell you.” 

Mr. Brayford stepped aside as he spoke, and, opening 
what appeared to be the design for an Egyptian tomb, dis- 
closed a little office, wh6re a gray, shrivelled old man sat 
at a desk cutting up newspapers with a pair of shears. 

“ Mr. W. ! ” said Brayford. 

A mild old face looked up. 


70 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“ My friend here wishes to know if you believe in the 
three-act epitaph.” 

The gentle old man smiled benignantly, shuffled out of 
his seat, came up to Brayford, shook his hand warmly, and, 
saying “ How do you do, sir ? ” to Kerman, returned to his 
work. 

Brayford closed the Egyptian design upon him, and, in 
answer to Kerman’s inquiring look, said, — 

“ My circularizer — a '^clever old man. He cuts the 
‘deaths ’ out of all the papers, and forwards to the sorrow- 
ing families the card and business terms of Brayford & Co.; 
but he positively declines to send the synopsis of my trini- 
tarian invention, my three-act epitaph — the tear, the sob, and 
the sigh. Obliged to humor him. I call him the Wonner. 
He thinks I’m a genius. That’s the peculiarity of his form 
of insanity.” 

Brayford rattled on in this fashion for some time. Ker- 
man found occupation meanwhile in looking round the 
little parlor into which the epitaphist had conducted him. 
The decorations of the room were curiously suggestive. 
Pictures of tombstones, the Egyptian design aforesaid, archi- 
tectural drawings of monuments, a water-color sketch of 
the Hampstead Cemetery, a white marble Cleopatra’s needle 
on a bracket, and an illuminated epitaph in three acts 
adorned the walls on one side of the room. On the other 
were pictures of famous comedians, Mr. Snaggs as the Rum 
’Un, in Brayford’s farce of “ A Good joke ; ” Miss Tottie 
Spinkie, in Brayford’s commedietta-burlesque of “ The Far- 
thing Candle ” ; Smiler the comic singer in the act of sing- 
ing Bradford’s side-splitting song, “ I’m out for a Jolly Lark,” 
were the most notable professional pictures. The furniture 
had an ecclesiastical style in its peculiary carving. In one 
corner of the room there was an harmonium, and in another 
a figure of Apollo. Several heads of cherubim in sculptured 
medallions hung over the mantelshelf, with a framed copy 
of the list of the Footlights Committee, a manuscript ad- 
dress presented to Mr. Brayford by the ballet of the Apollo 
Theatre, who had been deserted by the management salary- 
less, and who, but for Brayford’s unsolicited generosity, 
would have had no Christmas dinner. In the midst of all 
these curiosities Brayford sat in a florid dressing-gown, 
carpet slippers, and a Turkish smoking-cap. The window 
of the room looked out on the Regent’s Canal, lazy barges 
floating by this quiet summer day. Monolith Cottage, the 


CRUEL LONDON. 


71 


residenoe of Mr. Brayford, was known all over Paddington 
as a dignified feature of “ The Paddington Marble Works 
and Mausoleum.” 

It was singular that Mr. Jeremiah Sleaford should call 
here while the Squire and Brayford were talking. The 
truth is, he had been tracking Mr. Kerman in a hansom all 
over London. Mr. Brayford was interested equally with 
Kerman in the cruel news which had expedited his move* 
ments. There was a conspiracy to ruin the Cemetery Com- 
pany. An adverse operation in Cemetery shares was 
shaking the institution to its foundation. Mr. Fitzherbert 
Robinson and others had suddenly flung all their promotion 
and other shares upon the market. The only hona fide 
investors were themselves — he, Brayford, and Kerman. 
They must that very day take means to protect their 
property. He knew what to do. He had no fear. They 
must buy up all the shares in the market. He did not, 
however, care to take this responsibility upon himself. He 
must have their sanction. They gave it, of course. Further 
than that, the Squire entrusted Mr. Sleaford with his cheque 
for a few thousand pounds. Mr. Brayford looked grave 
over the biisiness ; Kerman only laughed. Sleaford shook 
Brayford by the hand, and told him to sleep in peace. 
Jeremiah Sleaford was not the man to be beaten by a com- 
bination with Robinson at its head. 

“ By the way, Mr. Brayford, I don’t know whether you 
go into society much ? ” 

“ No, not much,” said the epitaphist. 

“ If you will honor Mrs. Sleaford and myself at Fitzroy 
Square, we shall be delighted ; very short notice, for which 
I apologize ; the reception has been noted for three weeks 
past in the Morning Post., and your name was down on the 
original list, but Mrs. Sleaford said she felt sure you did 
norcare for the frivolities of high life, and I let the matter 
ptass ; but if you will come, I need hardly say that we shall 
feel honored and delighted. ” 

Though Brayford felt that this condescension veiled an 
attack up"on his purse, he rose, and thanked Mr. Sleaford 
for the compliment he had paid him, and accepted the 
invitation. 

In the meantime, the corner house of Fitzroy Square 
was having a rare time. It had been literally turned inside 
out. Thelfuriiiture had been packed away under a tarpaulin 
in the garden. The fireplaces had been filled with looking- 


CRUEL LONDON. 


glass and pans for flowers. Bedrooms had been converted 
into refreshment and cloak rooms. Only one apartment 
had been left, in fact, and that was Mr. Kerman’s room, 
which was not to be touched on any account. 

It is one o’clock on the day before the party. The 
table is laid for breakfast. Tim Maloney is reading the 
morning newspaper and soliloquizing. 

“ One o’clock, be jabers, and not up yet ; it’s wonderful 
how he’s just dropped into the swell ways of the town. 
Out night after night, nothing that he isn’t in at, no dissi- 
pation too big for him this season ; it can’t last, that’s 
sartin, divil a bit ; he must have dropped thousands on the 
Derby, and Mister Roper would ruin the divil himself. 
Talk of the divil, here he is.” > 

“ Good morning, Tim,” says Mr. Roper, with an air ol 
aristocratic condescension. 

“ Sir to you!” 

Master not stirring yet ? ” 

“Ko, sir; at the opera last night — champagne suppei 
afterwards, when they suddenly discovered as it were Mr. 
Sleaford’s birthday, and the Squire come out strong.” 

“ It seems to me, Tim, that it’s always Mr. Sleaford’s 
birthday, and that Mr. Kerman is always coming out 
strong.” 

“No, sir, it’s not always the master’s birthday ; some- 
times it’s Miss Sleaford’s, and sometimes it’s Mr. Tom’s ; 
and, savin’ yer presence, I suppose if the Squire laikes to 
come. out strong he can plaze his precious self.” 

“ I’m not so sure of that Tim, unless Mr. Sleaford is 
his banker.” 

“ Be jabers, an’ if the governor is that same, it’s only a 
deposit account, depend on it; and Master Sleaford’s the 
man to honor the Squire’s drafts to any amount.” 

“ Thank you, Tim, you nearly made me laugh. I should 
like to laugh, Tim, but things look too serious.” 

“ Do they now ; and by St. Patrick I had begun to 
think so, for I can smell a writ before it is issued, bein’ so 
used to them in the old days, before the Sleafords, an’ all 
on us came into our fortunes. What’s the matter — ye may 
V trust me, ye know that ? ” 

“I do. You are more in his confidence than I am, Tim. 
How do you think the master’s off for cash this morning? ” 

“ By my soul, I’ve been drameing of this same black 
day for the last six months. There was a man here yester^ 


CRUEL LONDON. 


73 

(lay and the day before afther him, and I’ll swear he wtis a 
process-server ; and I heard Misther Sleaford last .week tell 
the missus they must be more economical, and Miss Emily 
is gettin’ bad-tempered again. By that same token I know 
there’s trouble cornin’, and I rade the verdict in your own 
face.” 

And how do you think he is off for money this morn- 
ing ? ” 

After two years’ friendship — bosom friendship, mind 
ye-^with my ould governor, speculation in the City, run‘ 
ning race-horses, losing a heap in that forring loan business, 
a partin’ with cash to Rooshuns and Turks, and backin’ an 
outsider for the Derby as was a bad fifth, what the devil 
he likely' to have in his pocket at this same blessed ininnit? 
.All’ the fortun’ as I see him a come into down at tlie funeral 
without a wake, the saints bless an’ preserve us ! Ah, Mr. 
Roper, a clever agent like yourself, it’s not me you should 
ax how much the Squire’s got in his purse.” 

While Tim is speaking, a gentle tap is heard at the door, 
which at the same time is cautiously opened. A cunning 
face peers in. It has a prominent nose, a pair of deeply- 
set cunning black eyes. 

When the face peered in, there presently followed in a 
faded black satin stock, a greasy black coat collar, then 
a waistcoat adoimed with a heavy gold chain, and finally a 
pair of legs encased in a greenish-plaid pair of trousers. It 
was the comical figure of a Jew, full of bending humbleness 
and suppressed audacity. 

“Well, Mr. Isaacs,, what do you want? ” asked Roper. 

“Beg pardon,” said the Jew, ignoring the presence of 
Roper, and addressing himself to the confidential servant, 
“ is Mr. John Kerman at' home?” 

“ What the devil d’ye mane by walking into a gintle- 
m all’s room like that, as if ye were a thafe or a sheriff’s 
officer ? ” . . ' 

“Beg pardon, my dear young man,” said the Jew, de- 
positing a greasy hat upon the nearest chair, and fumbling 
in the &*east-pocket of his shabby frock-coat. “ Beg pardon, 
I tliought the master would prefer that I came in quietly, 
vich Mr. Roper, vill tell you I never do these things un- 
pleasantly, s’help me Sarah ! ” 

“ What do you want? ” Roper asked. 

“Kotmuch. It’s only a small sura for a swell, and I 
wants to do it kind and polite.” 


74 


CRUEL LONDON, 


“A writ?” 

“ That’s the docnment.” 

“You can’t serve it this morning.” 

“Vy not, Mr. Roper, vy not, my tear?’ 

“ Better come again.” 

“ Vat ? now I am in the housh? ” 

“ Yes, be ruled by me ; don’t stay this morning. 

“ ’Pon my soul you seem to be good friends, ye two — if 
you’ve any sacrets I’ll just lave the room,” said Tim, in- 
tending to warn his master that something had gone wrong. 

“ Not at all, Tim,” said Roper ; “ I only desire to im- 
press upon Mr. Isaacs that he cannot see Mr. Kerman this 
Hiorning.” 

“ Why can’t he ? ” asked the Squire, entering the room 
at the moment. 

“ Ah, a real shentleman ! ” exclaimed Isaacs, bowing low 
to the squire. “ A real shentleman ! A thousand pardons, 
Mr. Kerman ; vill you just cast your eye over this leetle 
bit of paper ? ” 

Mr, Kerman picked up a bundle of letters on the table, 
and, with a brief apology to Mr. Roper, commenced read- 
ing them. Betting lists, tradesmen’s bills, prospectuses, and 
a very miscellaneous correspondence were quickly disposed 
of. 

“ What is there for breakfast, Tim ? ” 

“ Some birds, sir, and ” 

“ Get me a soda-and-brandy, and some anchovy toast.” 

“ Yes sir,” 

“ How are you, Roper ? ” 

“ All right, thank you.” 

“ 1 looked in to ” 

“ Get some money.” 

“ You are not up to the mark this morning.” 

“ I am not.” 

“ Veil, I vishes you good day,” interposed the Jew, who 
appeared to have remained unnoticed since he placed his 
missive from the Court of Queen’s Bench into Mr. Kerman’s 
hands. 

“ Get out, get out,” said Roper, a mandate upon which 
Mr. Isaacs acted promptly, glad to retire without abuse. 

“ No, Roper, I am devilish bad this morning ; I’m getting 
sick of this tightness of the chest, as you call it. Besides, 
have you not seen the latest betting at Tattersall’s ? ” 

“ Yes. tliat’s nothing ; the horse is all right. They’re 


CRUEL LONDOU, 


75 


only depreciating him to get on all the heavier by and by. 
If you are short of money this morning, that little matter 
of the balance on the Goodwood can be paid in a bill, or, if 
you like, I can get your own discounted.” 

Roper produced a pocket-book, and drew out a 'slip of 
blue paper, with a stamp on it. 

“ I won’t be bothered this morning,” said Kerman. 

“ Won’t be bothered !” exclaimed Roper. “Business, 
my dear sir, can’t be dismissed in that way.” 

“ Yes it can, Roper ; I’m out of sorts. Look in to-morrow. 
Good morning.” 

“ If you insist ? ” 

“ I do.” 

Roper left suddenly, and Tim came in with the breakfast. 
Kerman walked impatiently about the room. He drank 
the soda and brandy, and sat down at the table. Tim put 
the toast before him. ' The Squire ate mechanically and 
without relish. How he used to devour his breakfast in 
the old days of Lincolnshire ! 

“ Don’t wait, Tim.” 

Tim uttered a ‘ bedad ’ and a grunt, and left the room, 
whereupon the Squire lighted a cigar, and walked to the 
fireplace, which was adorned with a low mirror and a 
fender full of flowers. He looked at them, an(t reviewed 
the situation. He did not speak. If he had put his thoughts 
into words he would have spoken as follows, — 

“ I’ve brought my cattle to a rare market, after all ! I’ve 
had politeness and shaking of hands enough at last. Poor 
Jane and all my dear old friends, if you only knew what 
I have suffered during the last three months ! If you only 
knew what I’d give to be back in the old Lincolnshire 
village ! Well, I suppose they’ve pretty nigh forgotten me 
now, or tried to, which is all the same. I soon managed to 
forget them. They must have a fine opinion of Jack Ker- 
man, the Squire as they call me now. A grand Squire I 
make! The story of the silk purse' and the sow’s. ear — the 
beijgar on horseback — that’s what old Jabez Thompson says, 
I reckon. To think that I’ve given up all these good- 
hearted folk for people who only care for my bit of brass. 
Seeing the world ! Sitting up all night, and going to bed 
in the daylight, gas and glitter, and humbug, gambling, and 
worse! To be the tool of this man, the butt of another, 
the dupe of a third ! ” 

He got up with a sigh,' and went to the window, flung 


76 


CRUEL LONDON. 


the remains of his cigar among the flowers, thrust his hands 
into his pockets, and muttered the thoughts tkat haunted 
him this evening with the persistence of unwelcome memo- 
ries. 

“It’s no good crying over spilt milk, as Uncle Martin would 
have said. He made a nice mistake in trusting me with 
his brass. His first opinion of me was about right, I expect. 
For that matter, I wish he’d taken his money with him, 
wherever he’s gone ; its been as bad as ill-gotten to me, so 
far. I wonder what the right thing would have been ? To 
marry Jane, I suppose, and settle down on the old farm, 
and gone jogging to market on Saturdays, like the rest. 
Well, I don’t know; Patty Sleaford’s a nice lass, and. sings 
and plays the piano, and it’ll all come right, I reckon. But 
how? Thirty thousand pounds to the bad means ruin. 
Come right ! — how ? ” 

He poured out half a tumbler of brandy into Ids soda, 
and drank it eagerly. 

“How did I say ? By Rookvvood? Gone down from 
first favorite to thirty to one. That’s bad. She shall go up 
again ! She must go up. By Jove, I’ll plunge on her ! ” 

He took up his letters, and ran his eyes over their con- 
tents. 

“ ‘ Two-fifty to-day, on account,’ must wait. ‘ Bill 
delivered.’ Yes, all right. ‘ Lady Emily at home at ten. 
R. S. Y. P.’ ‘ Dine with me at Reform; eight sharp.’ 

‘ May the Miss Flanagans have the pleasure of Mr. Ker- 
man’s company. Queen’s Gate, dancing at eleven.’ Cer- 
tainly ! Yes you shall have that pleasure. All of you, 
while there’s time. Who said Jack Kerman was get- 
ting tired of London ? Who said he regretted the old home 
and the old friends? Who said he was down on his luck? 
Who said his last hope had shivered on Rook wood ? Who 
said anything else had a chance for the Leger? Show me 
the man who says it ! ” 

He caught sight of his face in the glass, pale, anxious, 
worn. It seemed for a moment as if his accuser stood before 
him. His bloodshot eyes were fixed upon the apparition, 
when he was recalled to the reality of the picture by the 
arrival of another visitor. 


CRUEL LONDON. 


n 



CHAPTER V . 

VISITORS, EXPECTED AND UNEXPECTED. 

“ How are you, Kerman? ” 

“ So, so ; not the thing.” 

“What’s wrong ? ” 

“ Headache — out of sorts.” 

“ I sympathize with you — fellow feeling ; I’m wretched.” 

“You? Why I thought everything went well with 
you ? ” 

“ No, you are wrong. I have my troubles.” 

“ What is the matter now?” 

“ Up late last night ; rather, didn’t go to bed until after 
breakfast.” 

“ Is that all ? ” 

“ No ; awfully hit at loo last night. The General let me 
in for a thousand pounds. Don’t tell the governor.” 

“ Not I. Who’s the General ? ” 

“ The old fellow with the stiff cravat and the square chin, 
whom you met at the club.” 

“ Oh, yes, I know. He’s a good general at cards, I 
should say.” 

“ Too good. You haven’t five or six hundred handy ? 
I'm stumped for the moment.” 

“You stumped! Why, you told me you made five 
thousand last week on Chatham and Dovers.” 

“ True, and lost it on Turks.” 

“ ’Pon my soul, I have nothing handy in the way of cash. 

“ Why, you haven’t been hit, surely ? ” 

“ Well, yes, I have.” 

“ I contradicted it in the City and at the Club.” 

“ Contradicted what ? ’’ 

“ The rumor that you have lost largely on the turf and 
ill foreign bonds.” 

“ I’m not exactly stumped, as you call it ; but I have had 
some losses. I shall soon pull round, don’t fear ; I arn on 
tlie right thing now. One can’t always win, you know.” 

“ What the deuce shall I do ? The General is a regular 


7S 


CRUEL LONDON. 


fire-eater ; he'll go all over the place and say that I can’t 
pay my debts.” 

“ I can let you have five hundred to-morrow.” 

“Never mind, a bill will do.” 

Tom Sleaford took from his pocket a purse, out of which 
he produced a bill-stamp. 

“ Here you are,” he said. “I’ll draw on you at a month. 
You won’t mind, old fellow, eh ?” 

“ I hate bills ; at least, I’m beginning to hate them ; they 
always make a fuss.” 

“ J\[y experience ; but, when one is in a hole, a bill is a 
capital lever.” 

Tom sat down, and drew out the note, affecting an earn- 
estness of financial trouble which was put on to probe 
Kerman’s condition and disguise his own. 

“Yes, no doubt; but when one isn’t in a hole, and one 
signs a bill for somebody else, that puts two people in a 
hole instead of one. That is my experience. My name is 
on a good many, and I ” 

“ You object? ” 

“ Not at all ; I was only agreeing with your sentiments. 
Anything to oblige you. This is how I object.” 

He took the bill and accepted it. • Tom Sleaford lighted 
a cigarette. 

“ Thank you, J ack, you’re a good fellow^ It will be all- 
right, old man ; I draw my directorial and managerial fees 
and salary at the end of next week.” 

“ You make a pile of money in the City ? ” 

“ Sometimes.” 

“ One of your City friends told me the other day that 
you have an establishment at Brighton, and another some- 
where else.” 

“Indeed!” said Tom, taken aback fora moment, but 
speedily recovering himself ; “ what sort of an establishment 
— a bank or a discount office ? ” 

“Neither ; but there, I don’t want to pry into your 
secrets, Tom. Where are you going now ? ” 

“ To get this bit of paper transmuted into bank-notes.” 

“ And then ? ” 

“ To the club to hand them over to the General, and 
hav„ another turn at the beggar.” 

“ Where shall you dine ? ” 

“ At Simmons’s. Will you come?” 

“ Yes,” 


CRUEL LONDON, 


79 


“ Good-by for the present.” 

As Tom Sleaford left the room, Mrs. Sleaford, in deli 
cate half-mourning, entered it. The Sleafords never in- 
tended to go quite out of black for Uncle Martin. Mr. 
Jeremiah Sleaford said it would be a good thing to keep 
the memory of the man green. It made people remember 
that a rich relative had died, and left them money. Behind 
Mrs. Sleaford came a maid, almost as calm and demure as 
herself. 

“Oh, good-morning, Mr. Kerman,” said madam, as she 
glided up to the Squire and extended her small, gloved hand. 
“ I am so glad to see you looking well after your visit to 
those nasty training-stables. I really began to think you 
were never coming back.” 

“ You are very good, Mrs. Sleaford. I am quite well, 
thank you ; but I have only been away three days, you 
know.” 

“lieally ! It seems weeks to us. I am sure Painty was 
continually .saying, ‘ When is Mr. Kerman coming back ? 
The house is like a desert without him ! ’ and it was, I as- 
sure you, so dull, so uninteresting, so unlike the house 
which your presence has nlade happy and genial ; always 
something going on, and something to do.” 

“ How is Miss Patty ? ” asked Kerman, not unwilling 
to put an end to Mrs. Sleaford’s compliments. 

“ Yery well indeed, the dear girl,” said Mrs. Sleaford, 
simpering. 

“ And Emily, — Miss Sleaford ? ” 

“Oh, quite well. Emily is always well; she is not 
troubled with nerves and sensibilities. Patty’s feelings are 
soon harrowed ; she appears calm and motionless, but she 
conceals beneath her amiable and gentle exterior a passion- 
ate and impulsive nature.” 

Kerman began to vdsh Mrs Sleaford would go. The 
maid stood motionless by the door, taking in every word 
her mistress uttered. 

“ Where are the ladies ? ” 

“ Didn’t Tom tell you ? ” 

“ He did not mention them.” 

“ The cruel boy ! he was to have told you that they are 
going to ride early to-day, and they may call as they come 
in to dress for the Row. I heard Patty say, “Tell Mr. 
Kerman we are gone out shopping, and ask him if he will 
make an appointment to meet us at the Corner by and by,” 


80 


CRUEL LONDON, 


“ Too bad of him to forget.” 

“ Very much so. I am going into Bond Street. The 
, carriage will pick me up at the Park end of Piccadilly. I 
dare say we shall meet. I couldn’t resist the desire to 
come in and see you, when I heard you w^ere not engaged. 
Au revoir /” 

Mr. Kerman opened the door for the gentle mistress of 
Fitzroy Corner and her demure maid. 

“Tim!” ^ ^ 

“ Yes, sir,’* responded Tim, presenting himself on the 
mstant. 

“ Order Thunderbolt to be saddled for me at three.” 

“ Yes, sir.” 

Tim disappeared, almost running against the demure 
maid as she re-entered. 

“ Oh, please sir,” said the maid, “ mistress sends her 
compliments and apologies, and have you change for a five- 
pound note ? ” 

She held the note in her hand. Kerman felt in his 
pocket and produced three sovereigns. 

“ That is all the change I have. Will that do for the 
present ? ” 

“ I dare say ; yes.” 

“ And that,” said Kerman, kissing her. 

“ For shame ! ” exclaimed the girl, retreating, and leav- 
ing the note upon the table. 

Mr. Jeremiah Sleaford appeared on the scene inoppor- 
tunely. 

“ I saw nothing, Squire ; don’t mind me.” 

“ I don’t,” said Kerman. 

“ I’ve mislaid my purse somewhere. Can you lend me 
a fiver ? ” 

“ Haven’t got one. Oh, yes, here’s a five-pound note,” 
said Kerman, taking up Mrs. Sleaford’s scrip and handing it 
to her husband. 

“ Ah, thank you,” said Sleaford, pocketing it. “ I want- 
ed to see you about the Kamschatka Banking Company, 
Limited; capital subscribed twice over. When can we 
meet for ten minutes ? ” 

“ Now ! ” 

“No not now ; I mean to-morrow.” 

“All right; any time you please.” 

“ I will write you. Good-morning ; I will fix an appoint- 
ment for to-morrow.” 


CRUEL LOMDON. 


81 


“ Very well.” 

“Good-by.” 

Mr. Sleaford was gone. Kerman rubbed his eyes. Tim 
entered and cleared the breakfast things away. 

“ Confound it ! ” said Kerman, “ I might as well keep a 
broker’s office or a bank ; it seems as if I’d nothing else to 
do but to give change or lend money.” 

“ The comparison don’t hould,” said Tim. 

“ How ? ” 

“ Bankers and brokers have their receiving days.” 

As Tim left the room, there was a gentle knock at the 
door. 

‘•More customers,” said Kerman, placing his two hands 
upon the table, in the attitude of a shopman. “ Come 
in!” 

The two Miss Sleafords came in accordingly. 

What can I do for you, ladies ? ” said Kerman, still 
standing in his tradesmanlike attitude. 

“ Take us to see the new Picture Gallery,” said Emily, 
promptly. 

“ Delighted ! I am sure,” said Kerman, meeting them as 
they advanced towards him, and shaking hands. “How do 
you do ? How are you, Miss Patty ? ” 

“ Quite well,” said Patty. 

“ Do you want to see the new gallery ? ” 

“ Yes; Emily’s Fred has two pictures there.” 

“ Ah, then it will be an additional pleasure.” 

“ Everybody has been calling on you, to-day,” Emily re- 
marked. 

“ Yes ; I have had quite a gay morning.” 

“ There isn’t another room in the house with a chair in 
it, or a carpet on the floor,” Emily replied. 

“Indeed!” 

“ Haven’t you heard noises all over the’ place — enough 
for a general dissolution ? We are in the hands of Barstou 
and Mackling, the decorators. Monday next is our great 
reception.” 

“ Of course it is. I ha(^ forgotten for the moment.” 

“ Father says it shall be the most brilliant event of the 
season.” 

“ The dear fellow ! ” said Patty, in her unsympathetic, 
monotonous way. 

“ The Marquis of Stony worth is coming,” said Emily, 


82 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“ and Lord Offington. Mr. Sleaford is going to astonish 
Fitzrov Square this time.” 

“ \^ou don’t seem to care much about it ? ” 

“ I don’t, Mr. Kerman ; you are quite right.” 

“ Emily’s so prosaic,” remarked Patty. “ I adore a fine 
reception, and more so when there is dancing; a formal re- 
ception that is really a ball in disguise is a beautiful 
idea.” 

While they were talking, an unusual noise of female 
voices was heard, evidently coming from the hall. Pres- 
ently there was a clattering on the stairs. Tim entered, un- 
ceremoniously, and whispered to his master. 

“ What’s the matter 'i ” asked Patty, while Miss Emily 
looked the same inquiry. 

“ Nothing particular,” said Kerman ; “ don’t be alarmed, 
some old friends of mine from Lincolnshire. Au revoir; I 
will be at your service in half an hour.” 

The Miss Sleafprds, however, would not be peremp- 
torily hurried away. While Kerman was trying to induce, 
them to hasten their departure, the doorway was filled with 
the most unexpected of all Kerman’s visitors this already 
busy day — Jane Crosby, in travelling attire, witli a shawl on 
her arm ; Mrs. Kester, in a bonnet of a remote fashion, and 
with a box which, though large, was evidently empty and 
easy to carry. The Lincolnshire dame deposited hpr box 
in a corner of the room and sat down upon it. The two 
Miss Sleafords could not restrain a titter of amusement as 
they left the room, bowing to Kerman as tliey went out. 
The Squire looked confused, and waited for Miss Crosby to 
explain. 

“ If you are ashamed of us, John, we will go home.” 

Jane had noticed the difference between. her own homely 
dress and the morning attire of the Misses Sleaford. 

“ Ashamed ! ” said the Squire, putting out his hand, “I 
am glad to see you.” 

Miss Crosby took his hand coldly.,. 

“ And you, Mrs. Kester, how are you ? ” 

“ I’m well enough ; but don’t talk to me. Jane’s come 
to do talkin’, and I’ve come to look after her ; and a nice 
time we’ve had on it. We’ve been an hour or two gettin’ 
to inn, and another a-gettin’ here. We’ve been livui’ in a 
fly seems to me a week, and he’s waitin’ outside. What 
Jane will have to pay, when ole th’ ridin’ is over, I doan’t 
know.” 


CRUEL LONDON. 


83 


“We are not used to the ways of big towns,” said Jane ; 
“ and there are plenty of giggling ninneys about. Those 
ladies were tlie Miss Sleafords, I presume, who were just 
going out as we came in,” 

Kerman noticed that Jane had a dialect. He had always 
thought she spoke like a lady until now. 

“They were the Miss Sleafords, yes,” he replied. 

“ Pm afraid we interrupted the conversation.” 

“ No, no ; our little interview was at an end.” 

“You had finished your talk?” 

“ Yes ; only a morning call before going out, just to ask 
how I was.” 

“ Politeness, shaking of hands, and how’s weather, I 
suppose ? ” 

“ That’s all.” 

“ May I sit down ?” 

“ I beg your pardon,” said John, placing a chair for Miss 
Crosby, and wondering at her aggressive manner and hei 
homely ways. 

“ Well, and how are you gettin’ on, John?” 

“Very well, thank you.” 

“ Seeing the world ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ And spending money ? ” 

“ The terms are synonymous.” 

“ You are not making money, I reckon ? ” 

Kerman was more and more struck with the fact that 
Jane had a decided dialect. 

“ Thanks to the munificence of Uncle Martin that is not 
necessary.” 

“ Eh ? But I suppose you’ve got through a good deal 
among fine folk, seeing the world, and all that. How's 
weather, and shaking hands i& not all done for nothing up 
here, I’m thinking.” 

“ No, my girl, no,” said John, assuming all the more an 
air of superiority as Jane tried in her pronounced homeli- 
ness to bring him back to the time when he wiped the dust 
of Manor Farm off his feet, and left it to see the world 
and become a free man. 

“ Liberty, if you’ve lots of money even, costs a good 
deal when you have to keep up freedom with aristocrats 
who have got none of their own.” 

“ Well, yes, Jane; but it’s civilized and pleasant; and 
the wheels of life go easier for a little golden grease.” 


84 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“ Yes; and it takes a lot of that expensive stuff to be a 
grand man in London^ I’ve heard say.” 

•‘It does; you have not been misinformed.” 

“ A rich man living in London, when he hasn’t been 
used to freedom and fine clothes, has to lend here and 
there ? ” 

“ Yes, he obliges his friends,” said Kerman, wondering 
what the meaning of all this could be, and submitting - 
quietly to Jane’s satirical cross-examination. It occurred to 
him that it was Lincolnshire in its frankness, only sound- 
ing strange to him because he had been away from the 
country so long, and had become accustomed to a different 
sphere of life ; indeed, it rather flattered him to note how 
much progress he had made in style and manners, as he 
contrasted himself with Jane, although he could not help 
admiring the fair, handsome, womanly face, with its flush of 
health, its bright eyes, its eloquent mouth, and the pose of 
the Hebe-like head. 

“ Then when the rich man gets poor, and wants money, 
John, the folks that have borrowed from him, pay up, and 
lend to him ? ” 

“No doubt.” 

“ They don’t turn round on him when he’s sold his lands 
for them and got through his bit of money, and say what a 
fool he’s been, and they always knew that he’d come 
down.” 

“ Is this what you have come all the way from Lincoln- 
shire to ask me ? ” 

Kerman felt the color mount to his cheeks. He rose 
angrily to his feet. 

“ Mrs. Kester and me,” said Jane, with calm delibera- 
tion, “have come all the way from Lincolnshire, just as 
other folks come up, to see the sights, but we thought we’d 
also see how the lad we’d known so long was getting on.” 

“ That was very kind of you, then, and the lad is glad 
to see you,” 

This almost mockingly, for Kerman was rapidly losing 
his temper. 

“ Is he? I should rather judge that the lad is offended 
at the old plain Lincolnshire way of his friend’s inquiries.” 

“ No, but there are other things in life, besides money, - 
Jane.” 

“Yes, lad, there are lands and properties; you’ve been 
selling a good many acres, lately, John ? ” 


CRUEL LONDON. 


85 


“ A few — a few useless acres.” 

“No more. Only useless acres, lad ? What about the 
old place — old Manor Farm. Ah, it were a sore grief for 
us down yonder, when we found Manor Farm in the mar- 
ket,” 

“ Yes, Jane, I too was sorry to have to do it, but mort- 
gages were worrying me.” 

“We thought you might have given us some notice about 
it, or come down yourself; we didn’t like notion of the old 
farm going into strangers’ hands.” 

‘ I hadn’t the courage to go down, Jane ; it cut me to the 
heart to have to think of selling it.” 

The Squire sat down dejectedly ; Kester moved sympa- 
thetically on her box, heaving a profound sigh, and Jane’s 
voice and manner softened as she replied : 

“ You did feel sorry, then? Aye, I’m glad of that. Some 
folk thought you cared nothing about it, but I said I was 
sure you did. I said I was sure your heart must have 
ached to part with the old place where you had lived as 
a lad. Don’t you remember the May Days, the Harvest 
Homes, the Plough Mondays, and the happy Christmas 
times ? ” 

Jane’s voice faltered. 

“ Aye, John, it almost makes me cry to think of the days 
that are gone — gone never to come back again.” 

Kerman rose, and took her hand in his, as he said, “ It 
cannot be helped now : I wish it could. I wish I could have 
managed without putting Manor Farm into the market.” 

“ You must have been very short of money even to 
mortgage it ? ” 

“ I was, indeed.” 

“Nothing but severe pressure would have made you do 
it.” 

“ Nothing but that.” 

“ And maybe you are very short at this moment ? ” 

“Short? No, Jane, no.” 

“ Be honest with me, John ; tell me straight ; I shall tell 
none of your friends, and Kester is as mum as if she were 
deaf. You’re very badly off for money now, at this very 
minute ? ” 

“ My dear girl, yes, I am, but ” 

“You hope to make all straight soon?” said Jane 
quickly, and confronting him on her feet as she spoke. 

“ I do.” 


86 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“ By horses ! — by St. Leger ? ” she exclaimed quickly, 
her face flushing with excitement. 

“ Yes, since I have said so much, I will go on for auld 
lang syne,” replied Kerman, with a sigh of relief. “ I’ll 
make a clean breast of it for old friendship’s sake.” 

“ Yes, for old friendship’s sake,” repeated Jane, a little 
sadly. 

“ As I stand here at this moment, Jane, I am a ruined 
man ; but next week 1 shall be rich again. Lately every- 
thing has gone wrong with me. I have had to buy my ex- 
perience very dearly — men have always to buy it.” 

“ Aye, and women too.” 

“ But I have made an excellent position ; I have a large 
circle of friends ; I go into the best society ” 

“Yes, maybe,” said Jane, impatiently, “ but what is to 
set you straight next week ? ” 

“ Rook wood for the Leger.” 

“ Rookwood ! I’m afraid you haven’t bought all that 
experience you talk of yet.” 

“Why, Jane? Explain yourself ; unravel this problem.” 

“ Unravel this problem ! ” repeated Jane, with something 
like a sneer, and raising her voice with the earnestness of 
honest anger. “ Talk Lincolnshire, John Kerman ; I’m sick 
of hearing thee talk fine. Rook wood’s scratched ! Now is 
the time for thee to talk English and common sense, if ever 
thou art going to make a stand for winter ; thy summer 
weather is over, lad.” 

“ Scratched ! ” gasped the hard-pressed gambler. “ Rook- 
wood stratched ! Nay, then it’s all up with Jack Kerman, 
and time for him to talk Lincolnshire and go back to the 
plough. I don’t know but it sarves him reight, though thou 
needna ha’ bin the croakin’ raven ; tha needna ha come to 
tell me on it and gloat over me. ” 

Kerman turned towards the wall, and, folding his arms 
over his forehead, leaned upon them in an agony of re- 
morse and disappointment. 

“Me gloat over thee in misfortune !” said Jane, again 
lapsing into the vernacular of which Kerman had been so 
perfect a master before he came to London — “me that 
nursed thee through the fever, and sat up by thy bedside 
and })rayed for thy recovery ? ” 

Jane burst into tears. Kester took out her handkerchief 
and sobbed. 

“ Me, who would have laid down my life to save thine ; 


CRUEL LONDON. 


87 


me, the raven ? Eh, but, John, you’ve stabbed me to the 
heart many a time, many a time ; it’s likely you didn’t know 
it, and I have forgiven it all, and I forgive thee, again, now 
that I hear thee speaking like thyself. But I’m no raven.” 

She dried her eyes, and motioned to Kester that she 
should do the same. 

“ And it’s no good all of us crying like a lot of bairns ; 
I bring good news as well as bad ; there’s note of the lark 
as well as of raven in what I have got to say. I don’t come 
to gloat over thee. God forbid, or to cause thee pain and 
trouble; not I ! I come to help thee, John ; to help thee, 
to comfort thee ; to let thee know that thou art not forgot- 
ten in the old place.” 

“Don’t torture me, lass,” Kerman replied, turning' to 
her an anxious and sorrowful face ; “ tell me all thou hast 
gotten to tell. I didn’t mean to speak unkindly. It 
weren’t my fault that Uncle Martin gied me his money to 
make ducks and drakes with.” 

“ Read that,” said Jane, handing him a letter. 

He read it hurriedly. 

It was from the owner of Rookwood, an old Lincoln- 
shire friend of Uncle Martin. 

“ Only for your own use this news., — remember that., and 
to save him., only for that — Rookwood will be scratched in 
the morning.’'^ 

“ When did you get this ? ” 

“ An hour ago,” said Jane, calmly. 

“ An hour ! ” exclaimed Kerman, looking at his watch. 

“ In time for you to back the Duke for a‘ place.” 

“ You are a wonder, Jane ! Talk of the prophets, thou 
art a ” 

“ Lincolnshire lass,” said Jane,, “ brought up among 
horses, and farmers, and grazing lands. Does thou think 
we have got to come to London to learn about horse- 
racing ? ” 

“Rookwood was going dowli in betting for some reason, 
it seems. But there’s no time to be lost if news be true ; I 
must send for my agent.” 

“ Roper ? ” 

“ Yes ; how didst know his name?” 

“ Never mind ! You must not trust him. He’s more 
fool than knave, perhaps, in this business. Scarlett’s your 
man — the biggest agent in London, does business for York- 
shire lords and Lincolnshire folk; that’s his card.” 


88 


CRUEL LONDON. 


She took from her purse a square card, and handed it 
to Kerman, who looked at her in amazement. 

‘He’s the friend of the gentleman,” she continued, 
“ who sent me that note, and Scarlett would do anything 
for him.” 

“ And who’s the gentleman ? ” 

“ Jabez Thompson ! ” 

“ The lawyer? ” 

Lawyer and trainer, didn’t you know that Mr. Jabez 
was Brook’s partner, the famous breeder and owner of 
Scarsdale?” 

“ No ! Then I’d better be off and look into tliis affair 
at once.” 

Tim knocked at the door, and entered with a telegram. 

Kerman, without apology, opened it, and read aloud, 
JRoohwood 50 to 1 ; will you go any further? 

He looked towards Jane, as if for advice. 

“Just say, no ; and give instructions to back the Duke 
for £20,000, and say no more till you've heard me out.” 

“ I am in thy hands, lass.” 

“ Can you trust this Irishman ? ” 

Tim grinned at Kester, and touched his forelock to 
Jane. 

“ I can.” 

“ Be jabers and Lcan’t trust myself, so it’s the koinder 
of you to say so. More power to you.” 

“ Very well, write the telegram. ” 

Kerman bustled about and wrote. 

“ Hadn’t I better send a message to Roper ? ” 

“ Yes ; keep a copy of it, and ask for a written reply, and 
let — what’s his name ? ” ^ 

“ Tim your ladyship, Tim, ” said Mr. Maloney, bowing 
gravely. 

“ Let Tim wait for it. ” 

Kerman wrote his telegram and letter, and Tim was 
solemnly instructed to takfe a hansom and deliver them. 
Tim realized the importance of the situation, and went on 
his way. 

“ That’s all right, ” said Jane ; “ and if it is not I’ve made 
it so myself. Now, sit down and listen to me quietly, 
while I tell you all about it. I knew how heavily you had 
put your money on this race. All Lincolnshire knew about 
it. Mr. Jabez Thompson talked of it to me, just as he had 


CRUEL LONDON. 89 

talked, over and over again, about the wav you were run- 
ning into debt and getting rid of property.” 

Mrs. Kester groaned. 

Sit still, Kester, we’ll soon get it over now. At last 
he came and told me all about scratching Rookwood, 
There was no time to be lost. I made up my mind to 
come to thee, me and Kester, ignorant as we are about 
London.” 

Mrs Kester said, “ Aye, lass ; aye, lass.” 

“ I w'as forced to promise that you should do nothing on 
the information till five o’clock, when the first news of it 
would be known. When Mr. Thompson saw that I was in 
earnest, he settled what I should do. He offered to come 
up himself, but I thought I’d like to spare you that, and also 
I felt that it would give me pleasure to do the business if I 
could myself. I’m not a fool,* as you know, John ; and 
Mr. Thompson soon put it all down for me exactly what I 
was to do, and I’ve done it, I think, as close to the instructions 
as if I were fulfilling a contract. I went and hedged the 
money myself, backed the Duke at ten to one, and at five 
to four for a place, deposited thirty thousand pounds in the 
bank, and took the bank-manager with me to the agent, to 
show' that I was good for the money. Jabez Thompson had 
already got the agent’s references about his capacity to 
pay. ” 

“ What ! exclaimed the Squire, “ You good for thirty 
thousand pounds. What do you mean ? ” 

“ This is what I mean, ” replied Jane. 

She went tow^ards Kester, who arose with sudden 
alacrity; she dragged the box upon which she w'as sitting 
into the front of the room. It was the box which Kester 
had unlocked before the meeting at Manor Farm, called 
for the reading of the will. 

“ Dost thou see that box, ” she asked, once more speaking 
in the dialect of the Midlands. 

“ I do ; the box thy Uncle Martin left thee in the wdll.” 

“ Aye, lad, that was my fortune.” 

“ They thought owd mester were an owd fool,” remarked 
Kester. 

“ Be quiet Kester,” said Jane, kindly. 

“ Yes, missus, eh dear, eh dear!” said Kester. 

“ AVc, Jack, that was my fortune.” continued Jane, now 
returning to her own natural diction. “ When all the com- 
pany were gone, and you w'ere free as you said, free to come 


CRUEL LONDON. 


'./O 

and go about the world as you liked, and when you had 
taken your leave ” 

“ I was a brute ” 

“ No, lad, no ; don’t say that. When you had gone to 
London with the Sleafords, Lawyer Thompson came and 
said, Miss Crosby, a word with you alone.” “ Yes,” I said, 
“ certainly,” and I made Kester and old Goff go out. “ Take 
a hammer,” Lawyer Thompson said, “and knock the bottom 
out of that box.” I took it and did so, and there we found 
title-deeds of properties which we never knew Uncle Martin 
possessed, and all made out in my name, deeds that had 
been drawn months and months back, properties that had 
been bought and conveyed in my name ; and there was a 
big roll of bank-notes and a letter. Here’s the letter.” 

She took it from her pocket to show him, but not to 
read. 

“ There’s no need to read it now. That box w^as light 
enough, so light that everybody was right to think there 
was nothing in it only that little bunch of violets ; but it 
was heavy enough in property, and, better, full of goodness 
and generosity. Heaven reward the dear old man whom 
none of us understood ! ” 

“ Ah, I doubt I was not kind to him,” said the Squire, 
reflecting upon the old man’s strange liberality to him. 

“ He was harsh and rough to you, lad, but he didn’t 
mean it in his heart.” 

“Well, I hope he forgave me as I did him ; but thou 
hast amazed me ! I’m in a daze.” 

“ I thought you would be.” 

“ And thou art rich now ? ” 

“ Yes, lad. Ah ! it’s like music to hear thee say ‘thee ’ 
and ‘ thou ’ again.” 

“ Eh, but it takes a load off my heart to know thou art 
rich.” 

“ How so, John ? ” 

“ When I came to think about it, I never felt that it were 
quite right of Uncle Martin to leave me all the money.’ 

“You’ll be happier now, then, John ? ” 

“ A sight happier.” 

“ I’m glad of that; I’m glad of that.” 

As she said so, Mr. Sleaford knocked at the door and 
entered. He looked around in affected astonishment, though 
he had met the girls and they had given him an idea who 
the unexpected visitors were. 


CRUEL LONDON. 


91 


“ What ! Miss Crosby, is that you ? 

“ Yes ; it’s me.” 

Jane looked at him defiantly. Sleaford found a pair of 
eyeglasses somewhere in his waistcoat pocket, and levelled 
them at the box upon which Kester had been seated. 

“ The box which our deceased relative left you in that 
extraordinary will ; I shall never forget that box.” 

“ Yes, the same box,” said Jane. “ The box that had no 
false bottom in it, no secret drawers, nothing but a biincli 
of faded flowers from Daisy Copse Meadow on the hill.” 

“ Ah, Sleaford,” said Kerman, “ we were all done — all 
sold. Lawyer Thompson is a sly dog. ’ 

“ Yes, no doubt ; I always thought so.” 

“ But you didn’t seem to think so at Manor Farm.” 

Sleaford looked steadily at the box. 

“ It was full of deeds and notes and money in all kinds 
of shapes,” said Kerin an, triumphantly. 

“ No. Eh ? What ! ” exclaimed Sleaford. 

» Fact.” 

“ For whom ? ” 

“ Jane — Miss Crosby.” 

“ You don’t say so ? ” 

» I do.” 

“ Then my niece is a rich young woman ? ” 

“ Who may your niece be?” asked Jane. 

“ Miss Crosby is my niece. I never denied the relation- 
ship. I delight in it — I always did,” said Sleaford, extend- 
ing his hand to her. 

Jane did not respond, and Mrs. Kester turned her back 
upon the whole company. 

“Nay, Miss Crosby, don’t refuse the sincere congratula- 
tions of an honest man, who has no pride, no feelings but 
sympathy for those who need it, and who only desires to 
congratulate you and welcome you to London.” 

“ Oh, bless you,” said Jane, “I don’t object to shake 
hands.” 

Sleaford took her hand heartily and kissed i-t. 

“And you, Mrs. Kester, why this reticence? — won’t you 
shake hands with me ? ” 

“ If it’ll do thee any good,” replied the old woman. 
“ There’s my hand ; if Jane there has got no objection I can 
have none, though shaking of hands counts for nowt when 

heart isn’t in it.” 

“That is very unkind, Mrs. Kester.” 


92 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“ Then why have you left us all this time and never come 
near us ? ” 

A happy thought occurred to Sleaford. 

“Don’t say never; my son Tom did himself the honor 
of calling upon Miss Crosby only the other day.” 

“ Yes, that’s true,” said Jane. 

“ And delighted he was, I assure you, to see you looking 
so well and happy; he did nothing but talk of you when he 
came home. Fact, indeed. But then, you were always a 
favorite of Tom’s, you know ; ah, yes, now don’t deny it ! 
You handsome young women in Lincolnshire, you have a 
deal to answer for.” 

Jane looked at the Squire and smiled, but Kerman 
looked grave and thoughtful. 

“ And how long do you purpose staying in ? ” asked 
Sleaford, turning in a propitiatory manner to Mrs. Kester. 

“ The Lord knows ! Till we have news as Leger’s run, 
I suppose.” 

“ That’s next week,” said the Squire, suddenly. 

“ Ay, well, that’s it ; though why we should stay here in- 
stead a-goin’ down and seein’ race run, I don’t know I’m 
sure.” 

“ Then you will be in town on my daughter’s birthday,” 
said Sleaford. 

“ Indeed ! ” said Jane. 

“ And you must do us the pleasure of dining with us on 
that day ; and we have a reception in the evening. Ker- 
man, you must join me in persuading Miss Crosby to come.” 

Mrs. Sleaford, finding the door wide open, entered the 
room as her husband was speaking. 

“ Ah this is fortunate ! ” he exclaimed, with an aside 
nod and wink at Mrs. Sleaford which that lady did not quite 
understand. “ My dear, this is our dear niece, and I want 
you to join me in pressing upon her our united invitation 
to come to dinner, and also to the reception to celebrate 
Patty’s birthday.” 

Mrs. Sleaford looked puzzled, and stared almost rudely 
at Jane’s dress. 

“ Miss Crosby has been travelling. So good of her to 
come here. Family party. Patty will be pleased, and ” 

Mrs. Kester closed the lid of the box which had caught 
Mr. Sleaford’s eye, and sat down upon it with a bang that 
made Kerman laugh in spite of himself. 


CRUEL LONDON. 


93 


Mrs. Sleaford suddenly understood what was expected 
of her. 

“ Certainly, yes. Really I was so taken aback, not ex- 
pecting to see visitors,” she said, “ that you will excuse me, 
my dear ; and how are you ? And how long it is since we 
have seen you ? ” 

“ Kiss her,” whispered Sleaford. 

Mrs. Sleaford kissed Jane with sudden fervor. 

“ Thank you. I’m very well,” said Jane. 

“ I am sure we are very pleased to see you. Miss Crosby.” 

“ Call her Jane, my dear,” said Sleaford, ostentatiously; 
“ miss sounds distant.” 

Oh, it does not matter,” Jane replied. 

Mrs. Kester was just saying to herself, “ This is as good 
as a play,” when in walked the two Misses Sleaford. 

“My loves,” said Jeremiah, “ embrace your dear cousin 
Jane ; ” and while he spoke, Mrs. Sleaford nudged Patty, 
and looked significantly at Emily. 

The girls moved somewhat coldly towards Jane, who 
still stood firm, erect, and defiant in the middle of the room. 

Patty grasped the situation at once. Something had 
happened which had made Jane Crosby’s good opinion de- 
sirable. 

“ Is this our cousin Jane ? ” she exclaimed. “ I am 
glad.” 

She flung her arms round Jane, and kissed her heartily ; 
while Emily shook her hand, and said, — 

“ How do you do. Miss Crosby ? ” 

“ Jane is good enough to accept our invitation to dine 
with us on your birthday, Patty, en families and to come to 
the reception afterwards.” 

“ Well, not exactly,” said Jane ; “ I don’t think lean.” 

Kerman caught Jane looking at him as if for advice. 

“ Do, Jane, do,” he said. 

“ Would you like me to come ? ” she asked, in a softened 
manner. 

“ Yes, I should, indeed.” 

“ I wish Tom was here,” said Mr. Sleaford. “ He 
promised to call on his way from the country.” 

“ He seems very fond of the country,” said Kerman ; 
“ but he works hard all the week, as he says, and he earns 
his weekly rest.” 

“ I will come, then, Mrs. Sleaford,” said Jane, “ if you’ll 
take me as I am — plain Jane Crosby.” 


94 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“ Handsome Jane Crosby, anybody else would say,” gal- 
lantly remarked Sleaford. 

“ That’s London, I suppose,” said Jane. “ Your South- 
ern manners would be all very well, if you meant all you 
said, Mr.Sleaford.” 

“ Our Southern manners are at fault to let you stand. 
Pi*ay take a seat. Miss Crosby.” 

“ JSTo, thank, you,” said Jane. “ What is the time ? ” 
Kerman looked at his watch. “ Your messenger ought to 
be back by now.” 

“ Yes,” said Kerman. 

“ And you forget my dear niece,” said Sleaford, “ that 
I am Lincolnshire born, if not Lincolnshire bred. We all 
pride ourselves upon that. By the way, I think I hear a 
cab at the door.” 

“ Messenger,” said Jane, looking at Kerman. 

“ Ko it’s Tom, God bless him” said Sleaford, who had 
walked to the window. “ Always to be relied on. Said he 
would look in on his way from Brighton,” 

“ Is Kerman in ? ” they could hear Tom say on the 
stairs, and the next moment he was in the room. 

“ Hollo ! ” he said, looking round, “ here’s a party ! 
Why, it isn’t your birthday yet, Patty. What! Miss 
Crosby ! How do you do ? ” 

Sleaford pinched his son’s arm. 

“Well?” said Tom in response. 

“Your cousin, your cousin,” said Sleaford significantly. 

Mrs. Sleaford also nodded at Tom, who at once con- 
cluded that something specially civil was exj^ected from him. 

“ This is a pleasure ! ” he said. “ When did you come 
to town ? How well you are looking ! And Mrs. Kester, 
I declare ! Well, Kester, and how are you ? ” 

Tom seized Kester by the hand. 

“ Middlin’, thank ye, middlin’, Mr. Captain,” said 
Kester. 

“ How are you, Kerman, my boy, how are you ? ” 

“ Our dear niece has accepted Mrs. Sleaford’s invita- 
tion to the reception next week,” said Sleaford. 

“ Indeed ! Ah ! tliat’s kind ; and how is Lincolnshire 
looking ? ” 

“Pretty well,” said Jane. 

“ Will there be any birds ? ” 

“Oh, yes; we expect quite a shooting-party on the 
(irst,” said Jane. 


CRUEL LONDON. 


96 


“ I should like to come. May I ? ’’ 

Old Sleaford squeezed his son’s hand on the sly. Tom 
was in a reckless mood. He felt he was in the right track. 
He talked away about town, the weather, the crops; referred 
to the last time when he had met Miss Crosby, and gen- 
erally conducted himself to the complete satisfaction of 
his father, though he finished up a little less noisily than 
when he commenced, at the remembrance of a catastrophe 
which had occurred on the very next journey he had taken 
northwards after his visit to the Marsh. 

Jane seemed pleased to see Tom, and said she was glad 
to hear he liked the country ; all the time she noticed that 
Patty took opportunities to whisper to Kerman, who, 
every now and then turned to the girl and made sotto voce 
remarks. Jane recognized at once that he spoke softly and 
deferentially to the youngest Miss Sleaford, and that there 
was an air of proprietorship in Patty’s manner towards him. 
Before she had time to do more than to notice this, leaving 
her memory to the task of storing it up for future reflec- 
tion, Tim Maloney entered hastily, with a telegram in his 
hand. 

Jane stepped forward, to the general surprise of all 
present, took it from him, read it excitedly to herself, and 
then, with a face flushed and a voice full of delight, she 
exclaimed, looking at Kerman, — 

“ Rook wood 100 to 1 ; the Duke 3 to 2.” 

“ Hollo, by Jupiter, that is a change ! ” said Tom. 
“ What’s all this — what is it, governor ? ” 

“ I don’t know,” said Sleaford. 

“ Yes, I’ll be at the party,” exclaimed Jane. “Good- 
by for the present. Come along, Kester, bring the box.” 

Kester got up immediately and followed her mistress, 
an umbrella in one hand, the box in the other. 

“ Good morning everybody,” continued Jane, “ and 
three cheers for the Duke ! ” 

“ Hurrah ! shouted Kerman, flinging himself into a 
chair and laughing aloud. 

“ Hurrah, too ! ” exclnimed Tom, “if hurrah is the cor- 
rect thing, and the house is oft' its head, hurrah let it be. 

The Sleafords looked at each other inquiringly, hlmily 
greatly amused, Patty and her mother with an expression 
of annoyance, old Sleaford amazed and bewildered. 

The next moment J:ine Crosby was gone. Tlie rumble 
of a box dragged duwn the stairs, the banging of a door, 


96 


CRUEL LONDON. 


the grinding of a cab’s wheels on the gravel outside, a peal 
of laughter from Tim Maloney, in which Kerman joined, 
and the first act of the comedy of Jane Crosby’s appear- 
ance in London was at an end. 


BOOK III. 


CHAPTER I. 

CONSPIRATORS IN COUNCIL. 

It is bad enough for his colleagues when a financial 
director is a rogue ; when he is a fool as well, the game of 
company-mongering is a cruel business. It is no interference 
with the exercise of the reader’s own judgment to say boldly 
that Jeremiah Sleaford was a rogue. He had been brought 
to moral grief by his excessive vanity. His leading 
ambition in life was to be thought clever ; next to this was 
his desire to be rich. Phrenology must have belied him, 
for he had a high, open forehead, about which he brushed 
his tliin hair. Perhaps there was nothing behind this fine 
intellectual sign. It might have been one of Nature’s freaks 
to put out a showy shop-window to an empty store. Clever 
men were taken in by it, for Mr. Sleaford had quite a repu- 
tation in the City as a clever business man, in spite of his 
occasional misfortunes. His scrupulous linen, his eyeglasses, 
the strut in his gait, his fluency of speech, his broad, open 
forehend, his punctuality, the neatness of his oflfice ( ‘ a place 
for everything, and everything in its place’ ), had won him 
the confidence of men much cleverer than himself. The 
death of his rich relative, the success of some of his latest 
schemes, and the fact that he was known to have been free 
and liberal with his money for at least a couple of years, to 
say nothing of his intimate association with Squire Kerman, 
the Lincolnshire capitalist, were guarantees of his monetary 
stability. Therefore he was allowed to go ahead, encouraged 


CRUEL LONDON. 


97 


to go ahead, trusted, flattered introduced into this scheme, 
bounced into the other, made chairman of this company, 
consulting director of that, and generally put to the front 
wherever boldness and a sanguine view of the future were 
desirable. Mr. Jeremiah Sleaford thought he was gradually 
climbing to the highest point of financial power, and he had 
launched out at Fitzroy Square with a liberal and ostenta- 
tious hand. But for the failure of a country aquarium and 
a steamboat company, promoted by the Financial Socfety, 
he would have purchased an estate in Essex a year prior 
to the incidents we are now narrating. These companies 
had been floated, but without any money being subscribed 
by the public, and the attempt to keep them swimming had 
been very ruinous. 

Unfortunately for Jeremiah Sleaford the company mania 
was just at an end when he went into it. If you had offered 
the public Consols in return for their subscription to some 
new limited liability scheme they would have hesitated ; 
and the fairest scheme had the least chance of success. 
Nevertheless, the Financial Society prospered. At first, 
this remarkable corporation only consisted of Mr. Maclosky 
Jones and his two clerks ; but the Hampstead Cemetery 
Company brought additional strength. Mr. Sleaford intro- 
duced that business to the Maclosky Jones organization, 
and placed on the Board, Jeremiah Sleaford, Esquire, Mr. 
Sle.aford, junior, Mr. H. Brayford, John Kerman, Esquire, 
William Roper, Esquire, and several other friends and 
financial associates. The Syndicate became famous. The 
successful launching of the Cemetery Company had estab- 
lished its re))Utation ; schemes and schemers poured in upon 
it daily. Mr. Fitzherbert Robinson, an outside ally, who 
had vast parcels of shares allotted to him, was a great 
person in promoting the sale of scrip among the clergy and 
nobility, having a useful press influence, a lord in his family, 
a hunting-box at Melton, and the proverbial impudence of 
that much-maligned indivdual, “the Devil liimself.” 

It was the week before the great reception at Fitzroy 
Square, in honor of Patty Sleaford's birthday, when Mr. 
Maclosky Jones called his intimate financial friends together 
in the handsome offices ( which now filled the entire Com- 
mercial Building in Birchin Lane) to tell them they were 
ruined. 

“ It’s just no gude me disguising the facts,” he said, 
in a strong Scotch dialect, which he jerked out from a 


98 


CRUEL LONDON. 


capacious mouth ; “it’s nae gude being sophisticated. Let 
us look at the difficulty in the face.” 

He fixed his calm eyes upon Mr. Sleaford, who turned 
red and pale by turns, and examined the countenances of 
his three friends — Mr. Brayford, Mr. Sleaford, junior, Mr. 
Roper, and Mr. Fitzherbert Rob.inson. 

“ But really, Mr Maclosky Jones, I don’t understand you. 
This is very sudden — very sudden, and, considering the vast 
interests at stake, I really, my friends, I cannot help thinking 
that our worthy secretary and managing director is exagger- 
ating the situation. It is true that for the last twelve 
months the depression — I may say the stagnation of British 
enterprise — has been such as to excite anxiety and careful 
precaution, but if the companies floated by the Syndicate 
have not all been successful, at least this financial corpora- 
tion has made profits.” 

“ In shares,” said Mr. Maclosky Jones, interrupting the 
oracular statement of Mr. Sleaford, “in shares, many of 
which, unfortunately, carry a heavy responsibility.” 

“ And in money, sir, in money, Mr. Jones, ” said Sleaford, 
striking theable with his fist; “ and I say in money ! ” 

Brayford said, “ Hear, hear !” Tom and Robinson re- 
mained silent. 

“ True,” said the Scotchman, adjusting his satin cravat, 
and thrusting a thimbleful of snuff into his capacious 
nostrils, “ and we’ve spent it.” 

“ How, Mr Maclosky Jones, how !” inquired Sleaford. 

Mr. Jones opened his desk and took out a very neatly- 
folded statement and handed it to Mr. Sleaford, at the same 
time that he consulted a copy himself, and read out a few 
items : — “ On the cemetery purchase, Sleaford senior, 
£5,000; Fitzherbert Robinson, £1.800, Mr. Jones, £2,500.” 

“ This is a private statement, I take it,” said Sleaford, 
looking at it through his eyeglasses, and not appearing to 
listen to Mr. Jones. 

“ It’s private among ourselves, I thought I’d just figure 
it out for the purpose of this meeting.” 

“ Yes, yes,” said Sleaford, “ we’ll consider that presently. 
The first question is, what are our wants and liabilities ? ” 

“ Our liabilities I am not exactly prepared with, but as 
to our immediate wants that’s not 'so difficult.” 

Mr. Maclosky Jones took frotn his desk a private cash 
book. While he jotted from it a series of calculations, 
Mr. Brayford asked Mr. Sleaford what was the position of 


CRUEL LONDON. 


99 


the Cemetery Company? Mr. Sleaford shook his head and 
raised liis hand reprovingly. 

“ Let us hear what our secretary and managing director 
of the Syndicate has to say about our immediate wants,” 
said Sleaford, wiping his eyeglasses. 

“ Five thousand pounds b^efore the Bank closes,” said 
Jones. 

“How long will that keep us straight?” asked Sleaford. 

“ About ten days ; after that we shall ” 

“Never mind after that,” said Sleaford. “Excuse me, 
gentlemen ; as the principal shareholder and director, and 
as the person most interested in all the financial operations 
of the Company, I wish to pull you through this difiiculty 
if I can, satisfied that it is only temporary ; and I am anxious 
to organize my own plans before submitting them for your 
approval.” 

“ Quite right,” said Mr Fitzherbert Robinson, speaking 
for the first time. 

“ Ten days, five thousand pounds ; and we have vast in- 
terests at stake. The Omaha Mining Company alone is 
sufficient to retrieve our losses in Cemeteries, Steamboats, 
and Aquaria. The telegranis in yesterday’s papers have 
sent up Omahas 20 per cent, and I hold 5,000 shares. Send 
a messenger for my broker, please.” 

Mr. Jones took up a speaking-tube and delivered a 
message, which was answered at once. 

“ He is in the house.” 

“Let him come here.” 

Mr. Jones once more addressed himself to the speaking- 
tube, and a closely-shaven, shrewd-looking gentleman en- 


tered. 

“ Sell one thousand Omaha silver mines,” Sleaford had 
written. He handed the slip to the broker. “ What’s the 
price now ? ’’ 

“ Five premium,” said the broker-. 

“ Thank you ; good-morning.” 

As he left the room, Mr. Sleaford drew out a cheque- 
book, and wrote a crossed cdieque for £5,000, which ^ 
ostentatiously handed to Mr. Maclosky Jones. 

“ There, Mr. Jones, pay that in to the credit 
Financial Society, and credit me with the amount: c ^ 
meeting of the VN’hole Board for to-morrow, and let 
cuss the situation free from the embarrassment of imm®^ 


100 


CRUEL LONDON. 


Mr. Fitzherbert Robinson rose and put out his hand. 

Let me shake hands with you, Sleaford ; you are a 
brick ! ” 

Sleaford extended his hand with a high and mighty air. 
Brayford said Hear, hear ! ” aloud ; and to himself, 
“ What a capital situation for a play ! ” 

Even Tom Sleaford looked at the governor with an ex- 
pression of genuine admiration, for the first time in his life. 

“ Mr. Sleaford, sir,” said Maclosky Jones, “ you are, in- 
deed, the Napoleon of finance. It was my intention to 
tender my resignation this day, but in face of such a mas- 
terly spirit and such facility of resource I’ll fight the battle 
through wi’ ye.” 

“ That is well and properly said, Mr. Jones. The 
officers who desert their ship in the hour of danger are 
not worthy of their country ; and with the port of Omaha 
on our lee, as a brave salt would say, we have a harbor of 
refuge into wdiich we may all fairly hope to sail triumph- 
antly. Now, gentlemen, good-morning. I have several 
other Boards to meet, and I dare say you have also other 
business calling for your attention.” 

The founders and wire-pullers of the Syndicate broke 
up, Tom and his father walking arm-in-arm to Change 
Alley, where Tom had a luxurious apartment as Managing 
Director of the Patent Horse-roughed Asphalte Company, 
just then the most popular of street-paving organizations, so 
far as the Stock Exchange was concerned, though the sys- 
tem had not yet stood the test of time. 

“ Now, look here, Tom,” said Jeremiah, his father, when 
the private door was carefully closed, “ there is only one 
chance for the house of Sleaford ; let me say two chances. 
I will not aggravate the situation. You must marry Miss 
Crosby ; your sister will marry Squire Kerman.” 

“ Indeed ! Easier said than done. Jane Crosby is all 
very well, but ” 

“ Don’t tell me you are looking elsewhere for a wife, or 
[ may say something unpleasant. I am not ignorant of 
fast life you have been leading; I am not altogether 
<d to your Saturday-to-Monday excursions.” 
to 01 mean ? Can’t a fellow who works hard 

jyig the week take his pleasure at the end of it ? My 
book?^*^®^ clerks do that, at all events.” 

Mr Tom, you spend a great deal more money 

your income warrants ; and I heard of you at Brighton, 


CRUEL LONDON. 


101 


the other day, driving a notoriously expensive lady along 
King’s Road in the style of a duke.” 

“ Oh, indeed ! Well, you at least don’t complain of the 
style,” said Tom ; “ you have taught me to have aristocratic 
ideas. ” 

“ Perhaps you will say I have set you the example of 
living beyond your means ? ” 

“ Well, if I were on my oath, and under cross-examina- 
tion, I should say so,” replied Tom, thrusting his hands in- 
to his ockets defiantly. 



“ Y ou are an ungrateful and wicked young man,” said 
the father. 

“ Oh, no, I am not,” said Tom ; “ don’t talk bosh. You 
shouldn’t show off and do the pathetic to me, governor. 
Give me credit for common sense, even if you think I’m a 
scoundrel.” 

“ I think you a scoundrel ! Heaven forbid ! ” 

“ It don’t matter much whether you do or not, governor. 
I’m out of leading-strings, and I mean to enjoy life as much 
as I can while I’m young and capable.” 

“ A clear conscience and a strict performance of duty 
are the proper way to enjoy life, Tom.” 

The wilful heir of the Sleafords laughed a hard satiri- 
cal laugh. 

“ Now, look here, governor ; you can tell that to Ma- 
closky Jones & Company ; it’s wasted here. What do you 
want me to do? Let’s come to business.” 

“ Very well, Mr. Reprobate. In ten days’ time I must 
have twenty thousand pounds. The little drama of this 
morning was simply a ruse arranged between Jones and 
myself, to impress Robinson and Brayford. Robinson has 
made some thousands out of us. We want a little of it 
back, and his energetic influence in raising a loan on Omahas 
and Cemeteries. Brayford can raise a couple of thousand 
on the mortgage of his house and works ; every little helps. 
But, with ail my resources, stratagems, enterprise, I am 
utterly and irretrievably ruined if I can’t command twenty 
thousand in ten days from this. There ! open confession ’s 
good for the soul.” 

“Well, you are a knowing, clever old financier,” said 
Tom ; “ and you wanted to talk to me like a father ! ” 

“ My plan is this. Of Kerman’s money, a large sum is 
invested in the Financial Society, and he has liabilities in 
Steamboats, Aquaria, and Cemeteries ; that doesn’t trouble 


102 


CRVEL LONDON. 


me now, because his winnings yesterday on the Leger are 
something enormous, and all through that remarkably clever 
and wealthy young woman, Miss Crosby. Did you see 
what the Post said about her ? ” 

“ No ; but I made a good thing myself on the Duke.” 

‘‘Very well, then, you can contribute to the sum I re- 
quire in ten days.” 

“ Well, yes, I may be able to help you a little.” 

“ Tom, you talk in a very hazy way about money. I 
hope you are not running into debt ? ” 

“No.” 

“ I know you speculate a good deal without cgnsulting 
me.” 

“ A little.” 

“ I hope, Tom, that you are honest in all your financial 
dealings. Honesty is the best policy.” 

“ But that is a more convenient proverb which you 
quoted to Mr. Jones once in my hearing, and which seemed 
to please him, ‘ Get money, Jones, honestly if you can, but 
get money.’ ” 

“ Tom, you have not the slightest respect for me.” 

“ Oh, yes, I have, but I’m not a hypocrite.” 

“ No, I don’t think you are.” 

“Well, we’ll not complicate matters by discussing the 
question. You want me to go in for Crosby; once you 
didn’t want me, and at that time I should rather have liked 
her. She’s jolly enough, but I don’t want a dairymaid now.” 
I’m above dairymaids.” 

“ A year’s life in London, and she would be a lady worthy 
of a duke,” said Sleaford. “ What a fool I was to make in- 
quiries into her monetary resources ! That old Martin was 
as deep and secretive as a Lincolnshire bog. Jane,Crosby 
is worth no end of money ; and she’s liberal, she would part 
without a pang. Whether she would or not, you could raise 
ten thousand pounds the day she accepted you.” 

“ And lend it to you ? ” 

“Yes.” 

“Well, I shouldn’t mind doing that; but to be frank 
with you, governor, I have my eye elsewhere — the prettiest 
woman in the world.” 

“ Rich ? ” 

“ Not a penny.” 

“ What extravagance ! But you don’t intend marrying 
her?” 


CRUEL LONDON. 


103 


“Don’t a,sk questions, and you won’t tempt me to de- 
ceive you. If Jane Crosby is as rich as you think, and she 
will have me with all my fanlts, and not expect too much, 
give a fellow a little license, let him have his Saturday to 
Monday, and other reasonable privileges, I don’t mind. 
There ! ” 

“ Good boy,” said Mr. Sleaford ; “ you can arrange your 
])rivileges after marriage. Fix her on the night of the 
))arty, make the running between now and then, and settle 
it before ; but I give you up to the night of the reception, 
which will dazzle her ; lay down your siege guns now, make 
the assault next Monday night, and the fortress is yours. 
Kerman is your only possible rival, and Patty has conquered 
him, I think. I introduced that ass, the impostor Calais, to 
Jane, to disgust lier, and as a foil to you. Now, Tom, our 
fame, our comfort, our very existence, not to say your Sat- 
urdays to Monday, are in your own hands; for if I come 
down, Tom, I shall pull you down with me ; Financial So- 
ciety and all Avill come down with Jeremiah Sleaford.” 

“ Not Asphaltes? ” said Tom, anxiously. 

“ Oh, I have touched you then.” 

“ Not Asphaltes ; this company is out of the Syndicate’s 
control ; this com})any is making money, at all events.” 

“ Perhaps,” said the father, mysteriously — “ perhaps. 
Good morning, Tom, we understand each other.” 

“ Perhaps,” repeated Tom, as the door closed upon the 
retreating form of his fatlier, “ I don’t know which is the 
bigger scoundrel, father or son. And just as I was think- 
ing of doing the right thing by Caroline, declaring my true 
name, and bringing her to London ! Thinks she has been 
in London, poor innocent! Thought I brought her to town 
to marry lier. Wonder what possessed me to go in for 
the girl so earnestly? I needn’t have done so; there was 
no Absolute necessity. Well, I can do as I please. I some- 
times think she’s a little mad; talks to herself continually. 
Migswood says she has a lover on the other side of the 
ocean. She’s a mystery. By Jove, if things go well, I think 
I’ll do the square thing and bring her to London as Mrs. 
Tom Sleaford. She would make a sensation ; she’s as pretty 
as a picture. Wonder what the deuce will be the end of it 
all. Tom Sleaford, you are playing a dangerous game ! 
But there is this to be said about it, you only trust yourself, 
my boy, so you have no fear of a confederate splitting upon 
you. ’Pon my soul, if I could feel thatl am not living over 


104 


CRUEL LONDON. 


a powder mine I’d settle down to be a respectable man. 
But, by Jupiter, if the governor comes to grief, there is no 
knowing what will become of Asphaltes ; and I v/as fool 
enough to lend my name to those Syndicate bonds. I sup- 
pose Miss Crosby would be a big catch, and, after all, she 
need never know of my private paradise. I must stipulate 
for my little holiday. Ah, well, we sliall see; it rests with 
fate. I shall just shut my eyes and drift; if I am drifting 
to the rapids and the falls, let’s hope they are a long way 
off ; perhaps the jdeasant stream will How on for good. It 
seems too jolly to last.” 

As the great tide of human life rolled out of the city 
that day, spreading away in every direction, Tom Sleaford 
was one of the units of the mighty crowd. lie did not halt 
among the tidal waves of the east or the west ; he went on 
and on far beyond London, for it was Friday night, and 
latterly he had made it a rule to go out of town on Friday 
and return on Monday. Nobody knew where he went. 
Latterly he only said generally that he was going out of 
town, except when he said he had rooms at blastings, or 
that he liked the trip to Brighton, or what a jolly place 
Ryde was for a quiet Sunday, or how fresh and breezy it 
was on the Northeast Coast — the truth being that Tom, 
when he left London, went in a direction quite the opposite 
to any of these. He Avould have a cab called, it is true, 
and tell the porter at the office door to drive to London 
Bridge or to Victoria ; but finally the Great Western Sta- 
tion would be his point of departure, except when he se- 
lected to reach his destination by a roundabout route from 
King’s Cross. lie had a little estate on the Avon, the mys- 
tery of which fate will unravel and expose in due course.* 


CHAPTER II. 

kester’s waxworks. 

From Mrs. Kester’s point of view the party at Fitzroy 
Square was a distinct novelty. She had seen nothing like 
it, though it reminded her of something exactly unlike it. 
Once, when she was in Lincoln, she had visited a famous 


CRUEL LONDON. 


lOij 

f.ravelling exhibition of waxworks. Somehow the Sleaford 
reception and the Lincoln sliow mixed themselves up in her 
mind. It seemed as if the Lincoln figures hadstep}>ed down 
from theii- ])edestals, and nodded, and smiled, and walked 
about for her edification. 

Mr. Henry Brayford, who was the earliest arrival, had 
found Mrs. Kester in a black silk dress and a cap with black 
ribbons in it, sitting in a sliady corner of the drawing-room, 
wliich had been converted into a paradise of foliage, flowers, 
and mirrors. Mr. Brayford had been ushered in by Tim 
Maloney, who had tipped him a wink and nodded in the di- 
rection of Mrs. Kester. Mr. Brayford, with a gay twinkle 
in his eye, which was made the livelier, in contrast with his 
sad-looking black clothes, black watch-chain, black studs, 
and sliiny kid gloves, glided towards Mrs. Kester, striking 
the keynote of the waxwork idea in her wandering mind. 

“ How do you do, Mrs. Kester ? ” said Brayford, putting 
out his right kid glove, the fingers of which had an odd 
look, owing to their unnecessary length. 

“Very well, I thank you, Mester Brayford; and who 
would have thought of seein’ you here ? ” 

“I might say the same to you,” responded Brayford. 

‘‘Ah ! tha might ; but then it’s no fault of mine as I’m 
liere,” said the old lady, shaking her cap. 

“Ko?” 

“ Miss Jane would mak’ me come down.” 

“ Indeed ! ” 

“ Would hev me dressed up in my best gown ; as for me, 
rd nivver hev left bedroom till thing was ole over ; but 
there, we can’t always expec’ to hev our own way in this 
life.” 

“ Ko, indeed,” said Brayford. 

“ I shall be rare and glad when we get home again to 
the Farm, I shall; for its nowt but hurry and flurry here.” 

“ Miss Crosby is quite the heroine of the week,” said 
Brayford. 

“ The what? ” 

“ The talk of the town.” 

“ Ah ! I towd her she raun be careful, or they’d be say- 
ing ole kinds of things about her.” 

“ But they are not saying anything unkind about her.” 

“Thank ’em for nowt, Mr. Brayford.” 

“ Excuse me a moment Mistress Kester,” said Tim Ma- 
loney, in a new imposing livery ; “ but there’s a gintleman 


106 


CRUEL LONDON. 


as is just about coming into the room who has been axing 
me if you are not the confidential woman of the Lincoln- 
shire heiress. He calls himself the Count de Calais, and 
he’s as much a count as Mr. Brayford is ; and the governor, 
it seems, introduced him to Miss Crosby, two days ago, and, 
be jabers, if he hasn’t the audacity to swear he’ll marry the 
lady, and he’s going to talk to you.” 

Mrs. Kester nodded and looked important. 

“ Is he an impostor, then, Tim ? ” said Brayford. 

“ Ah, well by St. Patrick, not more than many that figure 
in what they call society — foreign counts born in St. Giles’s, 
chevaliers without ancestors, ginerals without regiments, 
honorables whose fathers were tallow-chandlers, authors 
whom nobody reads, and authoresses who are as mythical 
as the Phanix. But here comes the spalpeen himself.” 

“ But what is he, then, Tim ? I have seen him before? ” 
asked Brayford. 

“ He’s a singer or musician, or something in that way, 
and he wants a wife.” 

A foreign-looking gentleman, with dyed hair and 
whiskers, and a fussy imperial that bristled over his chin, 
walked into the room and surveyed it through an eyeglass. 
After a general look round, he sauntered up to Mrs. Kes- 
( 31 *. Brayford stood aside. The foreign gentleman bent 
forward from the lower button of his waistcoat as if he had 
a mechanical joint there. 

“ Mrs. Kester, I belave ? ” said the foreign count, in an 
accent almost as distinguishable as Tim’s. 

Mrs. Kester nodded. 

“Will you permit me to say a few words to you? I 
came at this early hour on purpose to have the honor of 
speaking with you. Pardon me, sir,” bowing to Brayford.” 

“ You may say what’s gettin’to say before Mester Bray- 
ford,” said Kester. 

But Brayford was of a retiring disposition, and he 
walked away to examine some fine exotics which filled up an 
adjacent fireplace. 

“How is Miss Crosby? — well,I hope?” 

“ Nimble, thank you,” said Hester, still seated, her mit- 
toned hands upon her knees. 

“ Lovely creature, lovely creature ! ” 

“ Aye.” 

“ Likes London, I hope ? ” 


CRUEL LONDON. 107 

“ Can’t say. Speaking for mysen I’ll be glad to get 
hoaine.’" 

“ Mrs. Kester, you are, I’m tould, her favorite woman, 
her confidential friend ; will you aid me? ” 

“ Aid thee ! why, what’s matter wi’ thee? ” 

“ I’m in love, madam, in love. I’m not one to beat 
about the bush ; I come straight to the point.” 

“ I should think tha would,” said Kester, eyeing him cu- 
riousl 3 ^ “And who may the lucky wench be? not my 
missus? ” 

“Your dear swate mistress.” 

Kester leaned back and laughed. 

“ Don’t laugh, my dear lady, but help me ; say some- 
thing in my favor; draw attention to my appearance, and 
111 reward the obligation. I am a count; if Miss Crosby 
marries me, therefore, you’ll see she’ll be a count-ess.” 

“Surely, surely,” said Kester, “ and ride in her own car- 
riage, I make no doubt.” 

“ With four horses,” said the count — “ four grays. Live 
where she pleases — in Paris, London, Moscow, Dublin, Italy ; 
visit the first families ; dress in purple and fine linen, and 
wear jewellery galore.” 

“ And pay for it all out of her own pocket, eh, your 
countship ? ” said Kester, looking straight at his 2 ^atent- 
leather shoes. 

“No, no, believe me,” said the count, solemnly, “I am 
not mercenary. I have money and prospects ; my expecta- 
tions are great, I can assure you, and — ” 

The dialogue was interrupted by the entrance of Mrs. 
Sleaford, Mr. Sleaford, and the two Misses Sleaford, who 
posted themselves within the doorway (shielded by an 
Oriental screen) to receive their guests, who now began to 
arrive by ones and twos and threes, and to fill the room 
with trailing dresses and a buzz of conversation. 

Mrs. Sleaford, in half-mourning relieved with diamonds, 
posed with a society air; while Jeremiah, the magnificent, 
with a frill in his shirt, and his thin hair brushed high up 
over his marble brow, strutted like a pouter pigeon. 

Patty was calm and self-possessed in white silk; and 
Emily looked half-ashamed of the whole business, in spite 
of the successful display of people and fiowers. 

Mr. Sleaford bestowed a ^patronizing bow upon Bray- 
ford, who was duly impressed. Mrs. Kester kept near Bray- 
ford, but could not be induced to speak. Brayford ad- 


108 


CRUEL LOUDON. 


dressed her several times, but she only retreated with him 
into tlie sliadiest corner of the room and watched the nod- 
ding and smiling throng. When Mr. Kerman lounged into 
tlie room with his opera hat under his arm and in immacu- 
late evening di-ess, the old woman’s eyes followed him with 
mereasing wonder. She had in her wandering mind two 
Germans, Jack the Laborer and Jack the Squire, Jack the 
nearly Lincolnshire farmer and Jack the Squire in liroad- 
eloLh. Both of them were manly fellows, but the gentleman 
of the two was a waxwork to Kester, a figure that had been 
screwed up and set agoing; and when presently Patty 
Sleaford, with her fair hair and blue eyes, and her pinky 
cheeks, leaned languidly upon the Squire’s arm, Mrs. Kes- 
ter smiled at the picture, and very nearly made a remark 
to Mr. Brayford, who, finding Tim Maloney passing by at 
the moment, inquired the way to the refreshment-room, and 
offered his arm to Mrs. Kester, but the old lady declined to 
l)lay the part of a walking waxwork, and so Brayford left 
her to dissipate in claret cup and coffee. 

Mrs. Kester was watching for the latest addition to the 
waxworks, her own dear “missus,” Jane Crosby, whose ap- 
pearance to-night was a source of great anxiety to Mrs, 
Sleaford and Miss Patty. They had asked Emily to “ see 
to her,” and not let her come into the room a “ dowdy.” 
Patty was sure the poor, dear, ignorant thing would excite 
a titter all through the place, if somebody didn’t see that 
she was decently dressed, Mrs. Sleaford, however, found 
comfort in the fact that Miss Crosby was rich, and famous 
too, for that matter, since the romantic story about the 
rescue of Kerman had been in all the papers. Kerman 
had not liked the paragraph, and he suspected that Roper 
was the author of it. Although he was glad enough to be 
out of his financial trouble, he felt small at the recital of the 
rescue, and under such influence it was not a little strange 
that his manner to-night was haughty, not to say defiant. 
Tom Sleaford had said to him, ‘ Why, you look as if you 
were wool-gathering, old man.’ Asked what he meant, Tom 
had said, ‘ You seem so proud, and grand, and self-satisfied 
Jack.’ The Lincolnshire Squire had replied, ‘ And, by 
Jove, Tom, that’s how I feel somehow, and for the first time 
since I came to London.’ 

Kester haa seen me two young men talking together, 
and she made a mental note that the Sleaford waxwork 
was not so bad after all, for Tom had an air of genteel dis- 


CRUEL LONDON. 


109 


sipation in his style which seemed aristocratic to poor old 
Kester. Nobody took any notice of her ; and she had gradu- 
ally come to a sort of established conclusion in her own 
mind that she was really in a show, and that the perform- 
ance now going on was something got up for her personal 
edification. 

Presently, when Jane Crosby came sailing into the 
room on the arm of old Sleaford, who had gone out ex- 
pressly to bring in his niece (he had given out that she was 
his niece), Mrs. Kester nearly clapped her hands. To her 
the chief waxwork of the evening was now on view, and a 
fine specimen it was. Jane Crosby was a picture of health 
and grace. It is true there was a touch of the dairymaid in 
her appearance, her arms were a little redder than was de 
rigioeur.^ and she had not deigned to use powder. But her 
face was almost aggressive in its beauty. It was a fair 
complexion, radiant with the fresh breezes of heaven. Her 
brown eyes flashed with the excitement of meeting fashion- 
able society for the first time in her life ; and in the ex- 
pression of her handsome, honest face there was the bold- 
ness of innocence. She wore a becoming dress of white 
silk. It was fastened at the throat with a single diamond 
set as a brooch, the first and only present she had ever re- 
ceived from John Kerman; but she also wore a ring which 
had been somewhat ostentatiously given to her by Tom 
Sleaford. Jeremiah the Politic had intimated to the Squire 
that Miss Crosby had as good as accepted his son. “ And 
I hope,” he had said, “that the next sensation in Fitzroy 
Square will be the preliminary arrangements for a double 
wedding, you and Patty, Tom and Jane, after which all 
ambition is over for me, Kerman. I shall have reached 
the summit of earthly bliss.” Kerman had made no reply, 
for he had not just then shaped his course of conduct. 
Mrs. Sleaford and the adorable projector and partner of 
her schemes had made up their minds to fix the matrimonial 
arrangements as their interests dictated. 

Kvery eye was upon Jane. The Count de Calais, wlio 
had slip})ed a sovereign into Mrs. Kester’s hand, to the in- 
dignation of that old lady, who had flung it after him as he 
slipped away into the throng, hovered in the train of Jane’s 
admirers, and bowed to her with reverential admiration. 
But he had to postpone his wooing to some other occasion, 
on the quiet intimation of Tom Sleaford that if the gover- 
nor did choose to have a sham count at Fitzroy Square, he 


no 


CRUEL LONDOjV. 


would not stand the sham count’s impertinence, Tliis was 
said in the refreshment room, over a split soda-and-brandv, 
and the count took it gracefully, and set down Tom’s anger 
to jealousy. 

There was no necessity for Tom to crush the count in 
Miss Crosby’s interest; for the Lincolnshire heiress was 
captivating all hearts, not upon financial grounds only. She 
was a genuine triumph on her own merits. The slight ab* 
sence of polish in her manners, and her evident enjoyment 
of the unaccustomed scene, gave a piquancy to her natural 
charms. Kerman was jealous of Tom ; Tom was jealous of 
everybody. She was jealous of Kerman, and she flirted 
with Tom as women will flirt, for the purpose of bringing 
Kerman to his senses. 

Patty Sleaford saw the situation, and took every oppor- 
tunity to entangle Kerman in unnecessary promenades and 
apparently confidential talks. Mr. Roper had not been in- 
vited to the party, and an alliance with Squire Kerman had 
become more and more desirable during the last few days. 
Patty, though she had a childish look had an air of repose 
that made Jane feel, as she afterwards confessed, mawkish 
and out of place ; and when Kerman conducted her to the 
piano, and she sang to the count’s accompaniment a song 
full of love and devotion and feminine sentiment, Jane felt 
that she could not compete with her, and she ceased to 
wonder that the Squire was captivated. However, there 
was one comfort in her calculations. She was determined 
that all doubts should end to-night; that she would either 
have him at her feet confessing his love, or she would give 
jiiin up for good. She would show him that she could do 
without him ; that she was not fool enough to make her- 
self miserable for him ; that if he did not think her good 
enough for him there were others who could find merit 
enough in her to be happy when she smiled upon them. 
It could not be that he really cared about her, or the events 
of the past w'eek, and her almost open avowal of her love 
for him, would have brought a declaration of his for her. 
Jane felt humbled when she thought of what she had done 
for him. Her pride prompted her to reflect on her con- 
duct, and to feel that there was only one satisfactory con- 
clusion to her visit to London — the announcement of her 
forthcoming marriage with her friend and countryman. If 
that did not come to pass it would be said that she had 
followed him to London, and had tried to buy him. In- 


CRUEL LONDON. 


Ill 


deed, there was no knowing whnl people might say. One 
thing she had made up her mind about, he should not 
triumj)h over her. 

In the meantime John Kerman had suffered all kinds 
of new sensations. Seeing Jane courted and flattered, dis- 
covering for the first time in his life what a beautiful woman 
she was, he had come to the conclusion that his love for 
her had manifested itself to him when it was too late. He 
saw that she walked about with Tom Sleaford, and talked 
to him with evident pleasure. He chafed at the fact that 
everybody was talking about the paragraph in the papers 
which showed him under an obligation to Jane. It irritated 
him to think how he had left this kindhearted creature un- 
noticed for years, spending the money which had by right 
belonged to her; how he had deserted his old friends, and 
when his selfish conduct had brought him to grief, how 
they had saved him. It had come into his mind that he 
had played anything but a manly part, and he had resolved 
that this night should not pass without an effort to redeem 
the past, and find a new and worthy path for the future. 
An honest word of explanation, a frank disclosure of his 
thoughts and feelings to his only true friend, would have 
saved him a world of misery ; but he was jealous of her, 
annoyed with himself, the victim of a false pride ; he was 
tired of the hollow mockery of London, and disappointed 
that money could not buy content and happiness. He 
M'ished old Martin had not left him sixpence ; he wished 
he had gone out into the world without a penny; he longed 
for that same freedom which had dazzled his untutored 
mind when Uncle Martin died ; in short, he was wretched, 
and he could not quite tell why he was miserable. 

At the back of the corner house in Fitzroy Square there 
were a small garden, a conservatory, and a couple of sum- 
mer houses. Dimly lighted with Chinese lanterns, the 
space was prettily utilized. The paths were carpeted. The 
flowers were all in full bloom, for they had been brought in 
during the day from the nurseryman’s. Tom Sleaford, who 
was viciously fond of money for the sake of the selfish pleas- 
ures it could purchase, had made up his mind to win and to 
marry Jane Crosby, and she had been so pleasant and 
agreeable to him during this eventful evening, that he was 
anxious to fulfil his father’s programme and propose for 
her; not that beloved her, or any such nonsense as that, 
he said to himself, but because she was jolly, handsome, 


112 


CRUEL LONDON. 


and rich, and he thought he could get along with her. For 
the time being, he wiped out all the other considerations 
which would have held back an ordinary honest man. He 
had done a complete tour of the rooms with her ; they had 
listened to an Italian song and a dramatic recital ; they had 
eaten an ice together ; they had looked at some of the best 
of the hundred hired pictures by famous masters; and at 
last tliey had found themselves seated in one of the dimly- 
lighted arbors in the garden. 

“ Now I think we will go back to the drawing-room, Mr. 
Tom,” said Jane. 

“ Permit me to detain you a moment,” said Tom. “ My 
dear Miss Crosby, permit me to recall to you the dear old 
place in Lincolnshire, where we first met.” 

“ Yes,” said Jane, encouragingly. 

“ If I had had the slightest encouragement at that time, I 
should not have to repeat solemnly now what you wouldn’t 
let me say then.” 

“Mr. Sleaford,” said Jane, about to say she hardly knew 
what, but anxious to stop what she felt was going to be a 
formal proposal from Tom. 

“ Forgive me, Miss Crosby. Jane — let me say Jane — 
don’t put me down as one of these mercenary men who 
have been hanging after you to-night. Before I knew that 
you had a penny, when, indeed, I thought you a dependent 
on Squire Martin, I loved you for your beauty and your 
goodness.” 

“ That will do, Mr. Tom,” said Jane ; “ that will do. I 
know you want to marry me — you, a fine gentleman ; me, 
an ignorant country girl, with a dialect. Nay, that's what 
I am, when all’s said and done. Suppose I consented, and 
I have been thinking about it.” 

“ My dear girl ! ” exclaimed Tom. 

“ Wait a bit. I have been thinking about nothing else 
for the last hour and a half, and I’ve been saying to my- 
self, ‘ Suppose Tom Sleaford asks me to marry him. ’ ” 

“Weil?” said Tom, just a little taken aback at her 
frankness. 

“ Suppose I did,” continued Jane, “ where should we 
live — in London or in Lincolnshire?” 

“ Wherever you desired,” said Tom. 

“I’m a practical woman,” said Jane, “ and I’ve learned 
a good deal during the last fortnight of my visit to London. 
I feel flattered by your kindness and attention, but I don’t 


CRUEL LONDON. 


113 


think I see my way to say ‘ Yes ’ to you. Once to-nis^ht I 
think I should have said it ; if you had asked me an hour 
ago, I think I should, but ” 

“ Don’t sav ‘ But,’ dear ; say ‘ Yes.’ ” 

“But look here,” continued Miss Crosby, disregarding 
the interruption, “suppose we married, and I came to live 
in London with you, I shouldn’t be fit for this kind of life. 
Not that I couldn’t smirk and smile, and paint my face 
and my manners too, if I tried ; but I shouldn’t be happy 
going to bed when one should be getting up ; simpering at 
parties like this, and pretending you are enjoying yourself ; 
looking at pictures, and listening to foreign songs that one 
doesn’t understand. But that’s not in my way, and I don’t 
think I’d ever get used to it. I should be tired in a month, 
and you’d be ashamed of me in a week.” 

“ Then we will live in the country at the Marsh. I’ll go 
in for farming, and hunting and shooting.” 

“Nay, you’d be just as miserable in the Marsh, as my 
husband, as I should be as your wife in London. Lads 
would laugh at your soft manners and cockney ways. You 
would complain that we get up in the middle of the night : 
and how would you stand Sundays ? Eh, dear, twice to 
church; dinner atone in tlie day; a gossip about crops 
and weather ; to bed at ten ; and there isn’t a railway with- 
in ten miles ; and the only decent theatre is at Lincoln, 
open at race times and the fair.” 

Tom set against this the counter reflection that London 
was only four hours away from the nearest station ; and he 
was not without a special experience of to him a pleasant 
combination of London and country life. 

“ And if we go to the theatre once in a year,” she con- 
tinued, “ we have to make a journey on purpose, and stay 
all night in Lincoln, and, maybe, not like the play when 
we’ve seen it. Nay, my lad, you would die of the dum})S 
in Lincolnshire, and it would make me miserable to see 
thee unhappy, especially when I love the dear old country, 
every inch of it, and all the plain, straight, honest folk in it, 
their homely ways, their country manners. I’m hungering 
to get back to it now.” 

“ Don’t say that.” 

“Yes, I do say it, and further,” she continued, rising, 
and putting out her hand in a kindly sympathizing way, 
there’s my hand as a friend, Tom Sleaford, but I shall 
uever marry.” 


114 


CRUEL LONDON, 


John Kerman and Patty passed the house just as 
Jane was laying her hand in Tom’s. The Squire watched 
the action, and Jane was saying, “ Take me into the liouse,” 
as she brushed by him, leaning on Tom’s arm. 

It is all over with Tom,” said Patty, as Jane and her 
brother walked slowly into the conservatory and disap- 
])eared. 

“Yes,” said Kerman. 

“ I wonder when they’ll be married ? ” 

“ Do you think they will be married ? ” 

“I should think so. Don’t you think so ? ” 

“Yes; of course they will be married,” said Kerman: 
and as he spoke he put the last concluding touch to his pro- 
gramme of action. 


CHAPTER III. 

THE SQUIRE COMPLETES HIS LOI^DON EDUCATION AND 
DISAPPEARS. 

“Are you not glad John?” said Miss Patty. “I’m 
sure my brother Tom will make her a good husband.” 

“ He ought to. She’ll be the best wife in the world.” 

They were seated in the arbor which Tom and Jane 
had just left. 

“ She is very kind-hearted,” said Patty. 

“ Kindhearted !” responded Kerman. “That is weak 
language applied to her. Miss Sleaford. She is the best 
woman in the world. You have no idea what she is. We 
were brought up together, she. and I.” 

“Yes, so I understand, in Lincolnshire.” 

“Yes lad and lass together, girl and boy; we walked 
together, went to the same church, gathered flowers to- 
scether on May day, were like brother and sister — more 
than brother and sister, only I didn’t know it. I never 
])roperly understood her. I was a fool, an ignorant dolt, 
too dull to see her good qualities.” 

“No, no, my dear Mr. Kerman, you paint them like a 
poet; you do yourself an injustice.” 

“ Patty — Miss Sleaford, you don’t know how selfish I 


CRUEL LONDON. 


115 


am. When I got that money which slie should liave had, 
I came away and left the old place, like a brute, came uj) 
here and thought myself a great swell, got into difficulties, 
mortgaged the old property, never consulted my old friends, 
never went to see them, .didn’t even write to Jane; un- 
known to me, she buys up the mortages, watches over my 
affairs, with the assistance of dear old Jabez Thompson, 
and at the last moment, when I’m on the brink of ruin, she 
comes up to London, and saves me — rescues me just as 
much as a drowning man is saved at his last gasp ; and I 
was half ashamed of her even then, because she wasn’t 
fashionably dressed, and didn’t talk fine, as they say in 
Lincolnshire. There’s a woman for you, Patty ! And 
here’s a man — a coward, a sneak, a fool.” 

Kerman stood before Miss Sleaford pale and agitated. 

“ No, no, Mr. Kerman,” she said, in her calm, measured 
way, “ do not say that ; if any one else spoke of you in such 
terms, I would never know them again, wherever I might 
meet them.” 

“ Do you really feel as much interest in me as that? ” 
he asked suddenly. 

“ Can you doubt it? ” 

“ After what I have just told you ?” 

“Yes, whatever you might say.” 

They were interrupted at this point by Mrs. and Mr. 
Sleaford. 

“ Let us go into the conservatory,” said Patty. 

“ Are they coming to make love in the arbor? ” asked 
Kerman, cynically. 

The old birds pretended not to see the young ones as 
they fi uttered away in the direction of the house. 

“ There they go,” said Jeremiah ; “ marriage used to be 
the reliance of states and nations. I feel like a potentate 
arranging alliances. These projects are just as important, 
my love, to us, as great political marriages to intriguing 
powers.” 

“Yes, dear,” said Mrs. Sleaford. 

“Tom has succeeded, that’s pretty certain; she has 
hardly left his side all the night ; my only fear was Tom, 
for I can’t help thinking that Miss Crosby is fond of Ker- 
man : it was a fortunate thing that we booked him early. 
Patty’s a clever girl — a dear, good, clever girl.” 

“ 1 liave known trouble enoiigli, Jeremiah ; if there is a 
fear of any more it would be best not to keep it from me.’ 


116 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“Trouble, my dear ; a man with large investments, and 
associated with the financial energy of his country, must 
always be full of anxieties ; but I have no reason, my love, 
to anticipate anything but prosperity, happiness, and 
wealth ; this night is a triumph for both of us ; we have 
only one drawback, Emily’s idiotic attacliment to Tavener.” 

“ But we can afford to look over that,” said Mrs. Slea- 
ford, apologetically. “ He’s a handsome young man, and 
some day may be successful ; I’m sure I hope so.” 

“Handsome, yes ; but art, unless you are at the top of 
the ladder, and can plant it against the casement of fashion 
and climb into the society of princes, is no good, Mrs. 
Sleaford, no good. Emily ought to know better.” 

“ It’s no use saying so.” 

“ I know it, but I can’t help regretting it. I have only 
seen Tavener once to-night.” 

“ He has gone.” 

“ Gone ! ” exclaimed Sleaford. 

“ He knows you do not care for him, and he only re- 
sponded to our invitation for Emily’s sake. He came as a 
matter of form. Lord Merrythought shook hands with him, 
and he looked very well, and walked about for a few min- 
utes with quite an air.” 

“ Did he, the upstart ! ” 

“ My love, you must not be severe, for Emily’s sake. 
Listen, she is singing ; what a sweet voice it is ! Come, let 
us return ; people will think it odd, and we have nothing 
more to learn about our darlings.” 

“ Right, my dear, right. Tom and Patty are provided 
for. Em must be treated as a luxury. Let her marry for 
love, as she calls it; we must patronize Tavener, and make 
our friends to buy his pictures, that’s all.” 

They re-entered the reception-room in time for the ap- 
plause which greeted Miss Sleaford’s song. The Count de 
Calais then performed a fantasia, which he played vvitli all 
his soul and body, fairly leaping at the instrument at one 
moment and seeming to soothe and stroke it the next. 
Mrs. Kester had found a sympathetic companion in an 
elderly gentleman who had suffered for many years from 
sunstroke, which nearly cost him his life in India. They 
were both delighted with the Count’s playing. Before the 
performer had finished, supper was announced, and the 
guests were hunting up the partners who had been alloted 
to them long before by Mr. and Mrs. Sleaford, during their 


CRUEL LONDON. 


117 


many promenades about the room, and by Miss Sleaford, in 
her quiet, unostentatious, and business-like way. Though 
the company was what is called in society slightly mixed, 
there w:ere some excellent people at the Sleaford’s on this 
occasion, West End people and City people, the former re- 
presented by the third-rate nobility, which finds the City a 
useful association, and the latter by some wealthy and well- 
known bankers, financiers, and brokers. Mr. Sleaford had 
no reason to feel ashamed of his guests, and Mrs. Sleaford 
had every reason to feel proud, because she could see that 
some af her most intimate friends were full of envy, hatred, 
and malice at her social success. 

Jane Crosby and Tom Sleaford sat together, and their 
manner convinced Sleaford that the one question between 
them was when the marriage should take place. The two 
young people, it was true, quite understood each other. 
They talked and chatted with a familiarity never so free 
as now. Miss Crosby appeared to be quite happy ; Tom 
perfectly at his ease. John Kerman thought so. He was 
beginning to feel the same kind of happiness — the happiness 
of knowing the worst — the happiness of having settled in 
your mind some great doubt, or fear, or plan. Jane looked 
happy, because she had refused Tom, and had resolved to 
be a martyr to her love. Tom was unconstrained, because 
he had done his best to carry out the paternal scheme, and 
had failed, not through any fault of his own ; moreover, in 
failing, he had at all events, made a friend of a woman who 
might some day be useful to him. For Jane had said, “ Let 
us be friends, Tom ; we are neither of us fools, and we know 
that love can't be turned on to order.” 

Tom had also felt, after all, that he had had a narrow 
escape from a difficulty, beyond that simple question of 
whether he would live in London or in the country for the 
remainder of his natural life. 

The Squire tried to imitate Tom in his gayety of man- 
ner, and at the moment he was really not unhappy, for he 
had resolved upon a great sacrifice. 

“Let us slip away from the supper-room as soon as we 
can, Patty. I want to finish that conversation we com- 
menced a short time since.” 

Patty nearly blushed. For a moment she wished the 
Squire were Roper; but she gulped down a glass of cham- 
pagne, and, looking into a future of luxury and ease, of car- 
riages and horses and plenty of money, said, — 


118 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“ I am ready.” 

“My dear Miss Sleaford— my dear Patty,” said the 
Squire, in the shade of a clump of white roses by the con- 
servatory, “ I cannot mistake the true feeling of your 
heart. There are those who think you cool and calcula- 
ting.” 

Oh, Mr. Kerman ! ” 

“ I don’t think so.” 

“ Thank you.” 

“ I am sure you are not.” 

“ Thank you again.” 

“ I know you would make sacrifices to duty and to 
love.” 

Patty looked up into his eyes, which were ablaze with 
a new light. His face was pale. 

“ How hard he finds it to say the word ! ” thought Patty. 

“ For some little time I have been endeavoring to study 
your sweet, self-denying nature.” 

“ Spare my blushes,” said Patty, not knowing what else 
to say. 

“ I do not know,” continued the Squire, “ whether 
most to admire your self-sacrifice or your devotion. Any 
man could not fail to feel flattered at your condescension. 
You love Mr. William Roper ? ” 

Pat:y uttered a little scream of surprise. 

The Squire took her hand, continuing his startling 
speech. 

“ You love him for himself ; you would marry me for 
n\y money.” 

Patty, after a fruitless struggle to resent the insult, 
broke down under the earnestness and truth of the charge. 

“ I don’t blame you, my dear ; I don’t blame you, my 
pretty little London lady. You are in the fashion. This 
Cruel London of yours makes matches every day on your 
father’s plan. You are only dutifully obeying him. Don’t 
cry, my dear ; don’t cry.” 

The Squire spoke with tears in his voice, and put his 
arm gently round her waist. 

“ You shall be made happy. Don’t be put out; dry 
your eyes. I’ll do some good before I lay down the part of 
squire and gentleman, and take up my own rigritful char- 
acter. Miss Crosby and your brother are coming ; they 
can see us. Take my arm, and listen as we walk. I must 
say all I have to say.” 


CRUEL LONDON. 


119 


Patty laid her hand upon the Squire’s strong arm, and 
they walked to a shadier part of the garden ; for now other 
guests began to seek the cooler air of the night outside 
the house. 

“ I’m tired of money,” continued Kerman, “ tired (tf 
everything, almost of life. I only loved one woman, and 
I have found that out too late. God bless her! I hope she 
will be happy, as she deserves to be, with your brother. 
But I couldn’t bear to see her another’s. I shall go away 
to America, chalk out a new life, and try to forget the past. 
As for the money, my poor self-sacrificing little London 
love, you and Roper shall have enough to satisfy even your 
politic father.” 

“Oh, Mr. Kerman!” exclaimed Patty, “you don’t 
know how mean and contemptible you make me feel.” 

“1 didn’t mean to pain yon,” 

“I see how despicable I am; I know how unworthy I 
am bf a good man’s love. Pray give me a seat.” 

He led her to a garden-chair away in the furthermost 
corner of the garden, and stood silently by her for a few 
minutes while she cried. • 

“ Don’t take it to heart so. Tell me that I have spoken 
the truth, and then I will proceed to tell you my plans.” 

“Don’t ask me to say “ Yes ” or “No.” Let the con- 
fession of my shame and humiliation suffice.” 

“ You don’t contradict what I have said? ” 

“ Oh no, Mr. Kerman, I do not, I do not.” 

“ Then say nothing of what has transpired until you 
have a letter from me in the morning. When your father 
or mother asks you if I have proposed, say that I preferred 
to put it in writing.” 

“ Yes.” 

“You promise?” 

“ I do.” 

“ You shall not regret it my dear. 1 will give you a 
dower that shall satisfy your husband. I want to feel that 
I have at least done one good thing ; and now, good-by ! ” 

He took her hand. She stood up. He kissed her. 

“ My child,” he said, “ not my wife ; I will be as good as 
a father to you.” 

The next moment he was gone. 

^ * 

And for all practical purposes, so far as this history is 
concerned, that was the end of the Sleaford party. There 


120 


CRUEL LONDON, 


was much talking and promenading, more singing, some 
flirting, eyen an impromptu waltz near the gi’and piano. 
Hlue lights and green lights were burned in the garden ; 
cabs and carriages dashed in and out of Fitzroy Square; 
linkmen bawled to each other; a card party was started in 
Kerman’s room ; and everybody said that the social gather- 
ing had been a decided success. Everybody was wrong. 
It had been a failure of the direst kind in the estimation of 
the host and hostess ; though Mrs. Sleaford found in her 
motherly heart a little corner in which Patty and her true 
lover were enshrined with happy omens. Tom confided to 
his parents, before the night was over, the result of his 
proposal to Miss Crosby; all that they could get from 
Patty was that Mr. Kerman would write her a letter the 
next day. Emily saw trouble in Patty’s eyes, and went to 
sleep at last in her arms, after obtaining a full and complete 
confession of all that had occurred. The next day a solici- 
tor waited upon Mr. Sleaford and Miss Crosby. In due legal 
form John Kerman had made out a deed of gift of ten 
thousand pounds, in the hands of trustees, to be paid on 
Patty Sleaford’s marriage with Mr. William Roper, or any 
other person whom she might freely select ; and a deed of 
gift to Jane Crosby of all he possessed besides, with a 
})ower of attorney for her to act for him in any question 
that might arise, assigning to her any interest he might 
still })Ossess in the late Ephraim Martin’s will, and re- 
questing her to place Mr. Jabez Thompson in communica- 
tion with his solicitor. The whole business had been put 
into careful legal shape, and there was a private note to 
Jane, in these words, “ I restore all (but the sum I venture 
to give to |)oor little Patty) to her who has a right to it. 
God bless you, Jane, my dear friend ; God bless you and 
good-by. I am going to face the world in earnest now. 
We shall meet again, I hope, some day. May you be very 
happy, my dearest and only friend.” 


CRUEL LONDON. 


121 


BOOK IV. 


CHAPTER I. 

MARTYRS AND VICTIMS IN PEACE AND WAR. 

From a luxurious home in the Southern States of 
America, to a fugitive existence in a country desolated by 
war ; from penury in Hew York to a happy home on the 
hillside of a smiling valley in old England : these were 
changes which represented strange experiences in a young 
girl’s lifetime. Caroline Virginia Denton, whom two years 
ago we saw standing by her father’s side on that ocean 
steamer leaving the harbor of Hew York, had gone through 
all this in a few short years, and we encounter her, still a 
girl (though exercising the duties of womanhood), at a 
picturesque house called “ The Cottage,” overlooking the 
peaceful valley of Essam on the Avon. 

In the rare summer setting of the English meadows, 
“ The Cottage” was a gem of architectural simplicity. Sit- 
ting on the green lawn, Caroline Denton, now Mrs. Philip 
Gardner, looked like some Oriental flower transplanted into 
an English garden. Less than the middle height, her figure 
was slim and dainty. She moved with an indefinable 
gracefulness. Her face, her hair, were Southern in type and 
character. Dark, with the glowing radiance of health, 
there was a world of softness and beauty in her eyes. They 
were black as night, and tender as opening buds in spring. 
Her hair had a tinge of raven blackness, and there was a 
wavy luxuriance in its folds. When she looked at you, the 
dreamy softness, the pathetic happiness of the face touched 
you. If you tried to read it you would say there was 
a void in the woman’s heart : a sense of a mission unful- 
filled ; a mind that had its sorrowful secret, nursed in nurs- 
ing hours of loneliness; a longing for something undefined. 


122 


CRUEL LONDON, 


When she smiled it was the snn breaking through a rain 
cloud ; when she laughed it was the sun at noon, bright, 
clear, jocund. But she rarely laughed, except at the })lay 
of an infant, her first-born, which would wile away her 
time by lamb-like gambols on the grass. Mrs. Gardner of 
England, the Caroline Virginia Denton of the Southern 
States of America, was a contrast to Jane Crosby, unlike 
her in every feature, as she was different in appearance, 
thought, manners, feelings, from the Sleaford girls at Fitz- 
roy Square. She was womanly to a fault — trusting, confi- 
ding, self-sacrificing, gentle, made to be loved — a beautiful 
creation, worthy of the Miltonic eulogium. 

Clad in a cream-colored dress of soft linen, with a bit of 
crimson ribbon round the throat that heightened the rich 
brown depths of her complexion, she was sitting in the 
shade of an elm by the summer-house at “ The Cottage,” 
with a long bend of the valley before her, the placid river 
separating her from the little town of Essam, with its 
lichen-tinted stone houses, its church tower among the elms, 
and its ruined valley in the distance — a crumbling reminis- 
cence of mitred abbots, superstitious kings, and battle-fields 
long since effaced by waving corn and thick green grass. 

It was the joyous summer time. The valley pulsated 
with a never-resting but peaceful life. The dragon-fly 
poised its shimmering wings on the sedges down by the 
river. The lark was singing somewhere in the sky. The 
air was full of a mysterious, lulling, somnolent music. A 
thousand bees were busy in the budding limes. The per- 
fume of the flowers tried in vain to compete with the scent- 
laden breeze that had kissed the swathes of newly-mown 
grass. Beneath the shadows of a willow-clad bend in tiie 
river, w'ater-lilies invited the butterfly to come and rest in 
their yellow bosoms. Now and then the murmuring silence 
would be disturbed by the plunge of a rat taking a mid-day 
sw’im ; or the plash of a fish, tempted from his retreat by 
some gayly-tinted fly. In the hayfields, flocks of young 
birds were trying their newly-fledged wings. The swallows 
sailed in curve and circle overhead. The mowers were 
resting in the shade, eating their frugal meal of cheese and 
salad, and passing round the yellow cider. The merry 
laugh of children at play came up from some hidden copse in 
the valley ; and a summer haze hung about Essam, giving 
its gables, towers, and trees the delicate appearance of a 
soft poetical drawing against the sky, unreal in its very 


CRUEL LONDON. 


123 


natural reality, a dream of old houses, a passing fancy of 
elms and crows, of ruined abbeys and square churcli towers. 

No wonder llie lieart of the woman to whom all this 
appealed in a thousand sympatiietic ways was touched with 
its j)oetry ; no wonder tiie soul melted in tender thoughts 
of the ])ast, and in present love for the little one that lay 
asleep in her arms. 

“Ah, my darling,” she said in a voice of musical sweet- 
ness, “all this is indeed beautiful; you are born in a land 
of loveliness; not so glorious in its tall grasses and its 
great shadowy leaves, its mighty savannahs, as your 
mother’s native land, but more beautiful in its sweet re- 
pose, its calm old ways, its nestling towns on river banks, 
and its everlasting greenness.” 

She was not looking at the child. Her eyes rested on 
the towers and gables of Essam. 

“ It is all like a dream ; I sometimes think I am sleeping 
through a long, long fancy ; and that I shall wake again in 
my once beautiful home among the cotton-fields, with the 
songs of the negroes coming up from the plantation. And 
then there is a troubled time, the tramp of soldiers, the 
hurrying of feet, the roar of cannon ; great fires flash, and 
the clouds of smoke go up to the sky ; then a weary flight 
on horseback, in rattling wagons, in boats at sea ; and a 
time of poverty, of proud starvation ; of a widowed father 
— old, sad, worn — longing to quit a land accursed, once so 
sweet and sunny, a country once so beautiful. 

“ ‘ Maryland ! My Maryland I ’ ” 

She tried to sing the touching lines, and burst into a 
flood of tears. The child slept on, though the hot agoni- 
zing drops fell upon its face. She bent down and kissed the 
pouting, cherry lips. Tliey parted into a srnile, as if the 
mother’s touch had awakened happy dreams in the infant’s 
slumbers. 

“Pm very wicked, Willie,” she said, “but it is not 
wrong to wish your grandfather could have lived to see 
you. William Graham Denton ! That’s your name, little 
one; it was his. May you be as good and fine a man! 
May your fate be cast in happier lines 1 To travel all this 
way in the hope of eventually laying his bones quietly and 
peacefully among strangers ; and to be killed on landing. 
Oh cruel, cruel fate? It makes me feel wicked, Willie, in 


124 


CRUEL LONDORT. 


spite of that soothing song the river is singing down there. 
Tristram. Decker would have loved to hear that music. 
Who was he? Poor Tristram, he was a Federal officer, 
quite young, and altogether unlike the others who tought 
against the dear, martyred South ; but your grandfather 
wouldn’t forgive him. If men who go forth to slay each 
other onlv knew the true and noble hearts first, before tiiey 
pierce them ! Sometimes I think it is all wrong; that God 
has left His beautiful world to its fate, and no longer lifts 
His hand to protect the good or to punish the wicked. Ah, 
but you should have seen your grandfather ! what a fine 
handsome man he was — tall and straight, with white hair. 
He was a king at home. 1 have often thought he was not 
himself in these latter days. He would talk to me for 
hours, as I am doing now to you, and he came to England, 
and brought me here without an object, without a plan, 
without any arrangement of any kind. He said we were 
journeying to the new Jerusalem, to a land flowing with 
milk and honey, to the home of our fathers, where we 
would find out their memorial tablets in gray old church- 
yards. Ah, Willie, he was a great man once, with hun- 
dreds of slaves, with lands that stretched as far as the eye 
could see, with a great house twenty times as large as The 
Cottage, with shady verandahs about it ; he was more of a 
king than an English monarch, and I was as gay and bright 
as yonder butterfly, as free and joyous as those swallows. 
They burnt that house down, and all the huts and cottages. 
Our servants fled. We had nowhere to rest the soles of 
our feet ; and we could never more sing, 

“ ‘ Maryland I My Maiyland ! * ” 

A young man, familiar to the reader as Tom Sleaford, 
but only known to the woman as Philip Gardner, sauntered 
from the cottage door and stood for a few minutes looking 
at her before she saw him. He was dressed in a light 
boating-jacket and trousers. He had, since we last met 
him, grown a beard and started an eyeglass. He put 
the foppish thing to his eye, and looked at the girllike 
mother and her infant. 

“ Talking to yourself again,” he said, presently, in a tone 
of reproach. 

“ Ah, Philip !” she exclaimed, with pleased surprise ; “I 
thought you had gone to London.” 


CRUEL LONDON. 


125 


“ I’ m not going up till to-morrow,” he replied, carelessly. 

“Oh, lain very glad. Hush, don’t wake the baby I 
will take it to Susan.” 

Slie got up, lifting her infant load lovingly, and went 
into the house. 

The Cottage was far more pretentious than its title 
would denote. It was an old-fasldoned house, covered 
witli creepers and nestling among trees. It was surrounded 
by a garden which, closed in at the back, broke away from 
walls in the front, where it ran into lawns, flower-beds, and 
clumps of foliage, ending in a sunk fence, beyond which, 
down to the river, The Cottage estate stretched in undula- 
tions of meadow lands dotted with sheep. The Cottage, 
house, farm, and estate, formed one of the prettiest in all 
the vale of Essam. It had been purchased some three 
years ago from its former owner by a local agent for Mr. 
Philip Gardner, who was understood to be a gentleman of 
means. He had bought it as it stood, furniture, stock, and 
everylhing, and paid cash down on the nail. The curiosity 
about the new-comer had nearly died out before he appeared. 
It was nine months befoi*ehe came, and he did not call upon 
anybody. It was understood he had a wife. A lady was 
with him, at all events, — a loud, showy woman. They did 
not go to church. The rector called twice, but on neither 
occasion could he see the master or the mistress. A gay 
boat appeared on the river, and the loud laughter of more 
than one vulgar woman was heard in the evening as Mr. 
Gardner rowed them to the boat-house which he had built 
opposite his estate. Mr. Gardner was no other than Tom 
Sleaford, and The Cottage on the Avon will explain his 
regular though somewhat mysterious weekly absences from 
town. He had invested in this estate during Squire Ker- 
man’s men-y days in London; he owned it before the 
Cemetery Company came to grief ; he was its devil-may-care 
master, with plenty of money at his banker’ s when he used 
to ])retend to Kerman ]^at he was short of cash. 

The Asphalte Company was a flourishing concern ; so 
was the Northern Ironworks, which he had bought and 
turned into a limited company. Old Sleaford had not the 
faintest idea of the money Tom had made ; and Tom had 
not the faintest idea of letting anybody know what he was 
worth. To avoid suspicion, and with a view to protection 
against reverses, he had bought The Cottage estate in an 
assumed name. In London he was Tom Sleaford ; at Essam 


1-26 


CRUEL LONDON, 


he was Philip Gardner, but he was very rarely seen by his 
neighbors. Tliey did not think liim worth knowing. 
The kind of life which had inaugurated tlie Gardner reign 
at Tlie Cottage was not calculated to make a good impres- 
sion on local opinion. Indeed, it was whispered over Essam 
tea-tables that the flaunting, vulgar lady they called Mrs. 
Gardner was not his wife at all, and that the lady visitors who 
came there were no better than they should be. 

A change had, however, come over the scene when, 
some two years ago, a pretty, foreign-looking girl began to 
be seen in the gardens, or driving along the highways. 
There had been quite a flutter in the church with the old 
square tower when she appeared in The Cottage })e\v, which 
had been vacant so long. The strict families of the town 
resented the intrusion ; and the rector had been informed 
that he must really inquire into the position and character 
of the lady. He had done so with politic care and discre- 
tion. Meeting Mr. Ganlner at the station, he had entered 
the same railway carriage, and led uj) to the subject with 
clerical deftness. Mi-. GardiH:?r had been perfectly frank 
with him. ‘‘ Quite right that you ask the question,” he had 
said ; “ jiray don’t a])ologize. I have led a free life, but I 
have sown my wild oats. I am really married, and the lady 
about whom you are so conqiliinentary is my wife, an 
American heiress, It is very good of you to say that under 
these circumstances Essam and the county society are open 
to us ; we don’t care for society ; we have reasons for 
living quiet and retii-ed, and I trust you will let us have our 
way, or I shall sell The Cottage and go somewhere else. 
AW my time is occu])ied in perfecting an invention on which 
I have spent many years; when that is done I shall be rich 
enough to buy all Essam and the county too, and then, Mr. 
Rector, I hope to be a worthy and a liberal parishioner.” 

Mrs. Gardner, the pretty American, had, therefore, been, 
permitted to go about without social molestation, and to 
attend churcli without comment, eilbept as to her bonnets 
and dress. Not that Essam and the county cared to break 
in upon the privacy of The Cottage. They did not believe 
much in Mrs. Gardner, She was too pretty to be very 
good, certain of the ladies said. Moreover, the Gardners 
were up at all hours of the night ; Mrs. Gardner dressed iu 
such out of the way style ; and all the men who chanced to 
meet her were in such raptures about her! She sang songs 
on a Sunday, and had been seen by people as they were 


CRUEL LONDON. 


127 


going to atternoon service, pninting at an easel fixed up in 
the meadows. There was sometliing weii-d and foreign 
aboiit the woman, and Essam society preferred to give her 
a wide berth ; though the people whom she liad to meet 
once in a way were courteous to lier more from fear tlian 
respect, for she had an imperious manner, an air of author- 
ity, tlie habit of being obeyed, whicli quickly put down any 
thought of insolence in man or woman. Nevertheless, Mrs. 
Gardner continued to be a mystery to Essam ; and for her- 
self it may be said that she lived a dreamy life, the reality 
of which she often doubted, sitting, as we see her now on 
summer days, talking to her infant in a half forgetful wan- 
dering manner, which did not please Mr. Sleaford, alias 
Philip Gardner. 

“ You’re always muttering and talking to yourself,” 
said Tom, when she came back to him. 

“Am I, dear?” she said, her great black eyes turned 
towards him. 

“ Am I dear? Yes,” he said. 

“ I think I was talking to the baby.” 

“ It’s the same thing. I don’t like women who talk and 
mutter to themselves.” 

“You said 1 was not to talk to the people at Essam, 
dear, nor to the doctor, nor to the minister; and as you 
are ordy here two or three days a week, I suppose I have got 
into the bad habit that way.” 

“ I didn’t mean you were not to talk exactly ; you ought 
to know what 1 meant.” 

“Yes.” ^ 

“Yes,” he repeated, mockingly. “Don’t say yes in that 
silly way, as if you were a child. You know what I mean 
well enough. I don’t want people talking about our affairs. 
gossi])ing and chattering about my business, what I do, 
where I go.” 

“ Don’t be angry,” said the woman, timidly, linking her 
arm in his. “1 never talk about our affairs; and., as for 
what you do or where you go, 1 can’t talk, because I don’t 
know.” 

“ You want to know ; that’s what’s the matter.” 

“ Not if you still object, love. But you promised to 
take me to London this summer, and show me the fine 
English ladies riding and driving in the Park ; and I do so 
jong to see London,” 


128 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“You know what befel Eve. Her curiosity ruined both 
herself and her husband.” 

“ But iny'curiosity is very mild, Philip. I don’t w^ant 
to hear anyiliing more than you wish to tell me, and I have 
never seen any more of England than this.” 

“ And isn’t this good enough for you ? ” 

“ It is very beautiful — so may a birdcage be ; but the 
occupant may get tired of seeing the same bars, however 
beautiful, forever.” 

“Oh, you’re tired, are you ? Very well, I will sell* The 
Cottage ’ and we’ll go somewhere else.” 

“ Now, my dear Philip, don’t say that.” 

“ I find you a stranger, without a friend, without a home ; 

I bring you here, I give you all a man can, and you are dis- 
contented.” 

“No!” exclaimed the woman, with something like a 
rebuke in her eyes. 

“ You hadn’t a penny in the woidd. You have money 
in your purse, and every luxury. You repay me with in- 
gratitude.” 

She took her arm away from his and stood still, her eyes 
flashing, the color leaving her olive face. 

“Don’t say that; I can't bear it. And I was not penni- 
less, Philip.” 

“I will say it. I say you refuse my kindness with in- 
gratitude.” 

“And I say you are cruel to say so.” 

“Cruel!” 

He rej)eated the word with a sneer. 

“Cruel and unmanly,” she said, her lip quivering. 

“ Thank you.” 

“ Is this the way English husbands treat their wives in 
return for love, devotion, the sacrifice of every thought and. 
wish ? Do you taunt them with the money you allow 
them, the food they eat? ” 

“Go on. I thought it would come out at last, all this 
talking to yourself. We’d better have it out.” 

“ Yes, in heaven’s name, let us, for my heart is bursting. 
For months past you have flung my ]>overty in my face, 
not oi)enly as you have to-day, but by inference in little 
ways, I can’t bear it. You will make me hate you.” 

“Well, upon my soul, that’s nice. And is this the way 
American ladies treat their husbands, since you are making 
comparisons between the two countries ? ” 


CRUEL LONDOl^. 


129 


She made no reply. 

“ Go on, sny all you think ; don’t mind me.” 

She flung herself upon the grass, and burst into tears. 

He lifted her up, and carried her to the rustic seat where 
he had found her talking to their child. She sobbed bit- 
terly. Her delicate frame trembled. She looked at him 
with a face full of passionate upbraiding. 

“Now, I hope you’ll be better. I’ve been expecting 
this for months. I knew the storm was brewing when I saw 
you talking to yourself again.” 

“ There was no storm,” she sobbed. “ My heart was 
full of love and tenderness.” 

“ Was it ? Then it’s a pity your heart should falsify 
your tongue.” 

“ Dou’t talk to me in that cold way; you will drive me 
mad.” 

She sobbed between every word, and the tears rained 
dowui her face. Yet a lark was singing overhead, and the 
sweet perfume of flowers played around her, breathing of 
nothing but love and peace. 

“ You don’t expect me to speak to you affectionately 
after what you have said ? ” 

“ Then go away,” she exclaimed, leaping to her feet. 

“ Leave me, if you have a heart that neither tears nor 
anguish can touch.” 

She flung back her hair, that had half fallen upon her 
shoulders, and stood before him with her eyes flashing, her 
wdiite teeth gleaming between her parted lips. 

“ Philip Gardner, my husband, the only person — man or 
woman — whom 1 can call friend in England, the only per- 
son wdio knows me, I have striven to think of no one else, I 
have put all the 'world aside but you, to you and to our 
little one I give the entire confidence of my heart ; I want 
to have some response, some little return ; and I am content 
to live a dreamless, purposeless life, if that pleases you — to 
live for you only, to be moved only by your whims and 
fancies ; but my pride will not let me put up with insult as 
well as neglect. 1 am content to be your slave, but you 
must not "taunt me with my dej)endence, my origin, my 
poverty. Let me be a slave and a creature of your will, 
but don’t tell me of it, and let your lip curl into a sneer. If 
you stood there with a whip and lashed me, you could not 
hurt me so much as you do when vou look at me as you 
did iust now.” 


130 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“All right,” said Mr. Gardner, taking out a match, 
lighting a cigar, and turning on his heel. 

She watclied him with a dull expression of surprise. 
When he had disappeared, she returned to her seat, her 
eyes fixed upon the gate, which he had closed behind liim, 
as he coolly strolled away into the meadows that led down 
to the river, As lie disappeared, she saw a figure outside 
the hedge pause and look wistfully at her. It was a pale, 
thoughtful sad face, and it looked at her with unutterable 
tenderness. “ Tristram! ” she exclaimed, and as she spoke 
the vision faded into the sunny air. 


CHAPTER II. 

VISIONS OF FORBIDDEN LOVE. 

“ He is gone now, my darling ; your father has gone to 
London, and I must talk to you or I shall go crazy. Kiss 
mamma, love.” 

The little one pursed up its chubby lips and kissed its 
mother. It was sitting on a crimson shawl in the midst of 
a hillock of hay. Mamma was kneeling beside it. They 
made a beautiful picture in the shade of the oak-trees at a 
bend of the hayfield outside The Cottage garden, bordering 
the Essam wood, that stretched away in leafy splendor for 
nearly a mile behind them. The wood was shut out by a 
long, luxuriant hedgerow. , 

It was a hot July afternoon. The mowers had left the 
grass to dry. The birds were still. Only a purple butter- 
fly alighted here and there upon the haycocks. The wild 
hop and the white convolvuluses climbed in and out of the 
hedge. The distant call and clapper of the bird-boy cairn? 
up from the cornfields like an echo. 

“Sometimes I think I am a little mad, baby, don’t you, 
dear? Never so mad as not to love you. I wonder if you 
will grow up to become tired of mamma; to look at her 
aside, and say unkind things to her?” 

“ Coo-coo,” said the baby stretching out its little arms, 
“Bless you, my sweetie ! ” 

She kissed it, and filled its Ian with hay. 


CRUEL LONDON. 


131 


“ I am goinor to tell you something Willie ; T shouldn’t 
tell you, only I know you can’t understand it. I wouldn’t 
tell you for the world if I thought you could.” 

“ Coo-coo,” said Willie. 

“ Yes, 1 know it loves mamma, and it likes mamma to say 
silly things to it, doesn’t it ? ” 

“ Coo-coo,” replied the baby. 

“ Well then, there was a poor young man in New York 
—I don’t mean poor as to money, but I say poor, because I 
pity him — and his name was Tristram Decker.” 

She looked round as if to make sure there were no 
listeners. A solitary peewit in the wood seemed to make 
ansvyer in its melancholy way, and assure her of a faithful 
sentinel on duty. “Peewit!” it cried, and still further 
away came up the hollo of the bird-boy. 

“ I think the birds and things begin to know us, Willie ; 
they think they know how lonely mamma is, and they want 
to comfort her.” 

A squirrel looked down from the oak trees and whisked 
away, as if to tell his companions not to come and disturb 
the pretty people down by the hedgerow. 

“ What was I saying ? Oh, I know ; now listen.” 

The baby tossed the hay from its lap and laughed. 

“ Yes, that’s line ! Oh, what a strong boy ! ” 

She kissed the chubby face, and then, re-seating the 
little one upon its crimson carpet, said, — 

“ Hush ! Now I’m going to talk. I know where I was ; 
that poor young man in New York. He loved mamma, he 
would have died for her; sometimes I think he is dying 
for her now. I saw him this very day last week looking 
over the hedge in the garden. Hush ! Don’t be frightened, 
and I’ll tell you all about it.’^ 

“ Coo-coo,” said the baby. 

“ Papa had been unkind again to mamma, very unkind ; 
oh, so cruel, so cruel ! and I wished I was dead but for you, 
dear, but for you ; and when Philip turned away as if I had 
been a black slave — yes, worse than mamma ever treated the 
worst colored woman on her father’s plantation — just then, 
when I thought my heart would break, Tristram Decker 
looked at me over the hedge. Hush, dear, it wasn’t him, 
it was his spirit; and I think he must have died forme, 
unless somehow his heart felt the ache of mine, and he was 
so sorry that the good angels, let his soul free for a moment 
to say it was sorry. Do you think he’s dead, baby ? ” 


132 


CRUEL LONDON. 


The baby held up its face to be kissed. 

“ You do,” suid the motlier, putting her arms round the 
child and kissing it. “You do; tlien I have no friend in 
the woi’ld, Willie. Even if he were alive, he could be no 
friend of mine, dear, because he loves me; it wouldn’t be 
right, dear. Strange, is it not? It wouldn’t be right, be- 
cause he loves me so much that he would die for me. But 
you mustn’t be sorry for him ; he fought in the war against 
us, and your grandfather cursed him, as he cursed all the 
North, and so I came to be here. Do you think mamma 
really did see that poor young man, or is solitude and neg- 
lect afflcting her mind ?” 

“ Coo-coo,’^ responded little Willie. 

“ Are you real ? Or are you a fairy-child sent to play 
with me? I believe you are as wise as I, Willie — you may 
easily be wiser. I’m only a child, a wayward child, and I 
am naughty, too. They have given me a new and beautiful 
world to live in, and I was wicked enough to call it a cage. 
But I am a foreigner here — a creature who doesn’t belong 
to these beautiful woods and fields, though they do try to 
make me welcome ; and if it weren’t for poor Willie, I 
should wander away over yonder hills, or ])erhaps go and 
lay me down in the river, by the side of the lilies. I 
daren’t take you along, because you are not all mine, dar- 
ling, and so I stay here to play with you, that the good 
people may not say I am ungrateful.” 

The baby had looked into its mother’s eyes, and, as if 
under their loving influence, had gradually moved into an, 
attitude of repose and slept. 

She lay down beside it, and her voice fell into a gentle . 
whisper. 

“ I wonder who you are like, — not like Philip, not like 
me. May you be unlike in your heart, unlike in your for- 
tunes! When you grow to be a man, be kind to the mem- 
ory of your mother ; and for her sake be gentle and loving 
to all women, they are so weak and obedient ; and oh, may 
you never know the heart-ache which your mother has suf- 
fered these last few weeks, — if you do, you will hate your 
father, as I arn beginning to hate him 1 ” 

Her voice grew louder. She rose to her feet. 

“For these last seven days I have suffered a lifetime of 
misery ; insulted, treated with scorn, sneered at ; it is four 
days since he has spoken to me. I have asked his forgive- 
ness, I have kneeled to him, he doesn’t speak. I, Caroline 


CRUEL LONDON. 


183 


Denton ? Why, I don’t think my heart stood still as it did 
in presence of Philip, when I fled with my father at night, 
and we stopped to look .back and saw the house in flames, 
and lieard tlie cries of the men, who neither gave nor re- 
ceived quarter.” 

A woman entered the field at the furthermost corner. 
Caroline saw her, and straightway took up the sleeping child. 

“ Dorothy is coming, darling, we must go ; I don’t know 
whether she is a good woman or a bad one, but we must go 
now.” 

Nurse and mistress met in the middle of the field. Mrs. 
Gardner laid the child in the arms that were jjut out to 
receive it. 

“ Why lor, bless me, missus, you’ll have a sunstroke if 
you don’t mind ! ” said Dorothy, a bony, weatherbeaten 
woman, in a lilac print dress and a white sun-bonnet. 

“We were in the shade all the time, Dorothy,” Mrs. 
Gardner replied, submissively. 

“ Master has been looking everywhere for you.” 

“ The master ? ” 

“ Yes, he’s bin and come back — lost the train or some- 
thing ; and he seems to be in a fine way.” 

“ What about, Dorothy ?” asked Mrs- Gardner, increas- 
ing her ])ace towards the house. 

“ Lor bless me, I don’t know, but he looked as fright- 
ened as if he’d seen a ghost.” 

“A what ! ” exclaimed Mrs. Gardner. 

A ghost. There, don’t stare at me like that, missus ; 1 
declare you gave me a regular start.” 

All at once Mrs. Gardner felt as guilty as if Tristram 
Decker had really come to visit her, and had been met by 
her husband on the threshold of The Cottage. A thousand 
fears crowded into her heart, as if the very ghost of the 
North American could dishonor her fair fame in the eyes 
of her husband. 

“A ghost!” she said again. “ Lor, no, tliere are no 
ghosts in the middle of the day, though one ’ud think you’d 
seen one, to look at you.” 

“Yes, I feel frightened, Dorothy.” 

“ What at? your own shadow, mum?” 

“ I don’t know.” 

“There, don’t fluster yourself; don’t go into the house 
like that, specially with a visitor in the drawing-room.” 

“A visitor?' 


134 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“Yes, we don’t have no visitors as a rule, but this is the 
exception.’’ 

“What’s he like?” 

“ How did you know it were a he, mum?” 

“ Is he pale, and has he blue eyes, and is he young? ” 

She had the vision-face before her. 

“ Pale ! He’s a red-faced, gray-bearded, pompous party, 
and the other’s not young either, thougli he’s dressed up to 
the nines, as they says at Essara.” 

“ Two visitors ? ” 

“ Yes, I said there was two.” 

“ Did you?” 

“ A course I did. And they come in with master, and 
they was a-having ’igh words, when I thought as Pd come 
out and see where you was.” 

“ Wliat were they saying ?” 

“ I dunno, except as one of ’em kept a-calling master Mr. 
Slyboots, as he said, ‘Don’t expec’ me to call you Gardner. 
Nothing of the kind,” he said. ‘ Though he does keep a 
gardener, 1 expec’, and a good ’un,’ says tlie other, which he 
talked like a Scotchman ; the very image of Scotch Jimmy, 
as keeps a grocery shop at Essam.” 

“ Friends of your master, I suppose, from London,” said 
Mrs. Gardner, not willing to learn anything to his disad- 
vantage from a servant. 

“ hh-iends, well I should say as they was enemies; and 
if he owed ’em a lot of money, or something worse, they 
couldn’t have treated him more disrespectful.” 

“ You have made some mistake,” Mrs. Gardner said, 
'with dignity. 

“ That’s what the Scotch gentleman said master had 
made, tliinking as he could go on without bein’ found out.” 

“ Silence, woman ! ” said Mrs. Gardner ; “ don’t you see 
that you annoy me. How dare }Ou pry into your master’s 
affairs and talk of them to me ! I tell you you have made 
some mistake.” 

“Thank you, missus; somebody has made a mistake, but 
it ain’t Dorothy Migswood. Woman, indeed! I’d like you 
to remember as you ain't talking to black nigger slaves 
when you’re talking to me, mum.” 

“You need not I’emind me of the fact, nurse,” said Mrs. 
Gardner; “they were human, if they were black.” 

“ Oh, they was ; then carry your brat ^murself, Miss Slave 
Driver!” exclaimed Migswood, thrusting little Willie into 


CRUEL LONDON. 


186 


ihe motner’s arms. “ If I ain’t as good as a black nigger 
slave, I ain’t good enough to carry this thing.” 

Little Willie woke up and cried. His mother hastily 
folded him to her breast, and hurried through the garden- 
gate, where Tristram Decker had looked at her and disap- 
peared. 

“A parcel of stuck-up minxes; one would think they 
was Queen Victoria herself and all the royal family instead 
c'f a lot of no-better-tlian-they-should-be’s.” 

Dorothy Migswood said this for the benefit of the head 
fly-driver from the Lion, who was waiting in the road with 
a cab, and talking to a stranger. 

“ You haint in a good temper this morning,” said the 
driver, “ Mrs. Migswood.” 

“Don’t call me Mrs., I’m Miss, and don’t pretend to be 
no more, though I have brought up a family.” 

The driver leaned back and laughed a loud guffaw. 

“ Who’s your friend ? ” she asked, looking at a little ugly 
man, who was sucking a short pipe and leaning against the 
gate. 

“ Meaning me,” said the stranger, winking at the driver. 
“I’m Bill Smith, and when I’m at ’ome, which ain’t often, 
I lives in the Ole Kent Road.” 

He was a small man, with what might be called accentu- 
ated features. His boots were down at the heel ; his hat 
was shiny and stuck on one side; his clothes were a dingy 
black ; the sleeves of his coat nearly covered his hands. 
Two glossy tufts of hair were curled and flattened against 
his cheeks. His mouth was an aperture that closed tightly, 
so that sometimes it only looked like an indication of a 
mouth. His nose had been broken : and he had a tantaliz- 
ing squint. 

“ Oh, you are a Londoner, are you,” said Miss Migswood, 
“ like master? You’re a gay old lot, you folks in London.” 

“We air, we air,” said Bill Smith, knocking the ashes 
out of his pipe, and putting the black cutty in his pocket. 

“And what do you want down here? ” 

“Come to see you, my dear; that's what we’re arter; 
that’s our little game.” 

Bill Smith grinned a ghastly smile. 

“ Well, vou aren’t much in the way of beauty in London 
if you’re a specimen,” said Dorotliy, sticking her arms akimbo, 
her flaj)])ing sun-bonnet falling back upon her broad bony 
shoulders 


130 


CRUEL LONDON. 


The fly-driver roared with laughter. 

“ Ideality’s only skin-deep — we goes in for brains in 
town,” said Smith. 

“ And where do you carry yours — in your boots ? They 
looks as if they was weiglited.” 

The fly-driver nearly had a fit. The horse thought this 
was a signal to move ; Bill Smith had to take it by the 
head. 

“I never see such a pair in my life,” gasped the driver. 

“As his ears? ” asked Dorothy, looking at Bill Smith’s 
head. 

“ Well, you air a caution,” was the Londoner’s answer. 
“ You knows your w^ay about. I used to think I was good 
at chaff, but you licks me ; that’s truth.” 

“ I can’t stop a talking here all day. What’s up ? ” said 
Miss Migswood, pulling her bonnet over her head ; “ and 
my complexion will go if I stands in the sun.” 

“My sides is regular aching,” remarked the fly-driver. 

“Oh, you’re easily pleased,” responded Migswood; 
“ every fool in Essam knows that.” 

The Lion’s head driver laughed again, and mopped his 
face with his handkerchief; for the sun was coming down 
“ a ’ot un,” as Bill Smith had more than once observed. 

“ Well, now, look’ere. Miss Migswood ; as you seems the 
right sort, and as business may bring us together, I don’t 
mind telling you a secret.” 

“ Don’t bust yourself about it,” said Dorothy. “ I don’t 
think business nor nothing else will bring you and me to- 
gether ; so if the thought as it will makes you free with 
your secrets, keep ’em, and then you won’t be disappoint- 
ed.” 

“ Ha ! ha ! ” roared the Lion driver, “ trust Dorothy 
Migswood; she’s got the tongue of old ’Arry hisself.” 

“ Oh, come, you’re a presuming on your petticoats,” 
said Mr. Smith. “If you don’t want to be friendly, why 
there ain’t no love lost, and the least said soonest mended, 
and so mum’s the word.” 

Bill Smith hit his open mouth with his open hand. The 
result was a hollow sound, like drawing a bung from a 
barrel.” 

“ All right. I’m in no hurry ; you arn’t the first bum- 
bailiff I’ve seen, and there’s a chap in Essam as can play 
the drum on his cheeks, and draw corks forty to the dozen; 


CRUEL LONDON. 187 

he’d give you ninety in a hundred and jump on you, ” said 
Dorothy. 

Turning her back on Mr. Smith, of the Old Kent Road, 
she made a face at the driver from tlie Lion, and marclied 
into the pretty garden of The Cottage, leaving the Lon- 
doner staring in amazement, and the countryman shaking 
the cal) with his laughter. 

“ Baint she a clever un ? ” he said at last. 

“ A clever un,” exclaimed Bill Smith, contemptuously, 
“ she’s a ” 

It was a word we cannot print. 

‘‘ I’ll let ’er see ! A what did she call me ? ” 

“A bum-bailiff,” said the driver, coming promptly to his 
rescue. 

“ She’s a liar ! That ain’t my profession ; and if I thought 
I looked like it, blame me if I wouldn’t chop my ’ed off, 
there now ! ” 

He took out his pipe and relighted it. 

“A bum ! ” he exclaimed. “ Why, what sort of a bring- 
in’ up ’as tliat woman ’ad ?” 

“Bringing Imp ; why she’s the most audacious lot in all 
the county ; she’s bin in prison, she’s bin in London, she’s 
bin in the workus, she’s bin had up for ’saulting a magis- 
trate ; and for all that there’s lots a folk as ’ud give anything 
to hear ’er talk, she’s such a witty un.” 

“ She’s a fool.” 

“ Not she ! Whatever she may be, she baint a fool.” 

“ A woman as can’t tell a respectable sheriff’s hofficer, 
who’s never touched a common distress in ’is life, from a two 
bob a day man, and his grub, I tell you is a fool. Me ! Bill 
Smith, of the Old Kent Road — me ! as ’as took possession 
of ])alaces and bin in Ji.fas. and ca. sas. for thousands, to 
be mistook for a man shoved in for rent, why, blame ’er, 
I’ve ’ad the maid of a marchingness to wait on me.” 

“ Come, guvnor, you’re taking of it too much to ’art; she 
be only a joking of you.” 

“ There’s one tiling. Mister Coachman, as no perfessional 
man likes, and that is, aspershions on his perfessional posi- 
tion. But there, as you says, it don’t matter, you can’t ex- 
pec more nor a grunt from a hanimal of that sort.” 

“ Slishsh ! ” said Mister Coachman, “ don’t you let her 
’ear you. She’d think no more about a knocking you 
down than I do a whisking them flies off that horse’s 
back.” 


138 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“ Wouldn’t slie?” said Mr. Smitli, quickly. “Do you 
know what I could give her for that ? ” 

“I don’t know, and I’m sure she don’t care,” said the 
driver. 

“Three months; and s’help me if I wouldn’t do it, 
there!” 

“ Are you from the Lion ? ” said a quick, anxious voice, 
breaking in u])on the dialogue of town and country 

“Yes, sir,” replied the driver, quickly. 

The new-comer was Mr. Tom Sleaford, pale and care- 
worn. He flung a liand-bag into the open fly, and got in 
after it. 

“Drive me to the Penfield Station, and come back for 
the two gentleman afterwards,” lie said, quickly. “ The 
mid-day express stops at Penfield ? ” 

“ Yes, sir.” 

“ And not at Essam ? ” 

“No, sir.” 

“ Catch the express and I’ll give you a crown for your- 
self.” 

“ Yes, sir.” 

Bill Smith watched the carriage roll along the road un- 
til it was lost in a cloud of summer dust. 

“ Good-by Mister Sleaford, alias Mr. Philip Gardinger ; 
this “ ’ere ansum cottage estate, in a ring fence, to be sold 
by auction, with all the wery choice and iielegant furniture 
and heffects, without reserve. Harticles of virtue, hold 
china, billiard- tables, wines of the finest wintages, by order 
of the Sheriff of Middlesex ; and I only ’ope, Mister Slea- 
ford, financer, director, manager, and general swell, that’s 
the werry worst thing as’ll ’a})pen to you ; that’s all the ’arm 
I wishes you, sir, and a pleasant journey to you. I ’ope the 
sherry wine’s good, Mr. Sleaford, junior. If there’s any- 
think I ’ates more nor another, it is bad sherry wine ; but 
give me a good dinner and a bottle of old brown, with a 
Madeiry flavor, and I wouldn’t call the Queen my aunt — 
s’help me 1 ” 


-r ft 




CRUEL LO.VDON. 


1^9 


CHAPTER III. 

THE AWA.KENING. 

“ Aee you the person they call Mrs. Philip Gardner?** 
said Mr. Maclosky Jones to the southern woman, as she en- 
tered the dining-room, where that gentleman and Mr. Fitz- 
herbert Robinson were sitting, examining a pile of papers. 

She had laid the baby in its cot. 

“ I am Mrs. Gardner,” she replied. 

“ Puir body ! ” said Maclosky, looking up at the trem- 
bling woman : “ that man has deceived you.” 

Slie stood by the table, her left hand leaning upon it for 
support. 

“ I don’t understand you,” she said with an anxious look 
at Mr. Robinson, who laid down a cigar which he had been 
smoking. 

“ Don’t tell her so bluntly,” said Robinson, stopping 
Maclosky, who was about to reply. 

“ I don’t see the gude o’ beating about the bush,” said 
the Scotclunan, tying up a parcel of paiDers with red tape ; 
“ the truth is jest tbe truth, however you may hedge it 
about with fine phrases.” 

Mrs. Gardner stood motionless, as if she were in a 
dream. 

“ Before you ask us any questions,” said Robinson, in 
something like a tone of compassion, “ you had perhaps 
l)etter retire to some room and read this letter which Mr. 
Gardner left for you.” 

He held out a sealed envelope. She took it mechani- 
cally, and went to the bedroom where her child was sleeping 
in a pretty swan cot. The infant lay there like a fairy cliild 
in a fairy nest, the great wings of the bird seeming to 
shield it from contact, with the vulgar world. 

The window was wide open. The leaves of a luxuriant 
creeper nodded at the casement, and made shadows on the 
linen covered carpet. 


140 


CRUEL LONDON, 


Mrs. Gardner opened the letter. There fell out upon 
the floor a ])ai*cel of bank-notes. She looked at them care- 
lessly, and then read as follows : 

Dear Caroline, — Our short time of pleasure is over. 
Tlie separation will possibly please you, as you have evi- 
dently ceased to care for me or The Cottacre. I am ruined 
in purse and possibly in character. I enclose you five hun- 
dred pounds, enough to take you back to America, and set 
you up m some little business. You are free. All is fair 
in love and war. I deceived you. My name is not Gardner, 
and I am not your husband. Good-by for ever. 

“ Phil.” 

She read the letter word by word, mastering its con- 
tents wholly, though every sentence stabbed her to the 
heart. She put her hand to her head, closed her eyes, and 
opened them again, as if to assure herself that she was not 
dreaming. She looked at the letter in her hand, at the notes 
on the Hoor. She saw the shadows of the leaves trembling 
on the carpet. The sweet breath of the fields came in at 
the open window, and she recognized its perfume. She 
looked at the cot, and thought for the first time how beauti- 
ful it was. She walked to the dresssing-table, and looked 
at herself in the glass. A deep sigh seemed to acknowledge 
the fact that her face was very sad. Then she looked at 
the letter again, and finally, breaking out into a low moan, 
she said, “ Father ! Tristram ! ” It was a wailing, subdued 
cry — the utterance of a wellnigh broken heart. “ Father, 
father ! ” and “ Tristram, Tristram ! ” she cried in her 
agony. 

The child started and opened its wondering eyes. 

“Willie,” she said, “ little Willie.” 

It whimpered. She took it into her arms, and pressed 
it closely to her bosom. 

“ Perhaps it is not true. I am his wife. That part of 
his cruel letter must be f dse. God knows I wouldn’t have 
fallen so low, and known it.” 

She moaned again, and looked vaguely about the room. 
Then she sat down upon a chair, and rocked the child, 
which put its arms round her neck. 

“My darling Willie!” she said, “I think I am having 
a bad dream : let your baby heart pray that mamma may 
wake.’ 


CRUEL LONDON, 


141 


There was a knock at the door. She paid no attention 
to it. The woman Mi,"swood entered. 

“ This is a nice go,” she said. “What are you going 
to do ? ” 

Mrs. Gardner made no reply. She went on rocking the 
child and herself to and fro. 

“You’ll have to find another man now, and you’ll easy 
do that ; many on ’em likes a bit of a pretty thing like you, 
and you needn’t go far to find a better than him as has 
gone and left yer. They’re a mean set, men, best on ’em ; 
only way’s to pay ’em out in their own coin.” 

The words fell unheeded upon Mrs. Gardner. 

“ Oh, you’re going to sulk. Well, do as you likes ; I’ve 
stood your airs long enough not to mind ’em much, and I 
never ti-eads on them as is down ; I’ve been down myself 
too often.” 

“ Do you remember the day that I was married, Migs- 
wood ; when I was ill, you know ; soon after they buried 
father?” said Mrs. Gai-dner, looking up inquiringly. 

“1 suppose you didn’t hear what I was saying on just 
now ? ” 

“ I never remembered it myself quite clearly.” 

“ She’s gone daft,” said Migswood to herself; but in 
response to the question she said aloud, “ Married ! Why, 
lor, you never really means to say as you thinks you was 
married ? ” 

“ Not married ? ” exclaimed the American beauty, as if 
realizing the situation now for the first time. 

She rose to her feet, laid the child once more in its cot, 
and taking Migswood by the arm, she drew her aside. 

“ You are a woman, whatever else you may be,” she 
said, earnestly looking into the hard, vulgar face of the 
servant. “ He says he is not my husband ; you echo him, 
and say I am not married. What does it mean ? What is 
the matter? Am I dreaming, or am I awakening ? ” 

“It depends what you calls dreaming. I never thought 
for a moment as you was married, nor nobody else. Why, 
there was two or three Mrs. Gardners afore you come to 
The Cottage.” 

“ Two "or three ! ” gasped the dupe. 

“ How do you think you could be married without 
knowing it?” 

“ Don’t you remember when I got up after I had lain 


142 


CRUEL LONDON, 


ill, and Philip took me to the city, and we came home, and 
you had a new gown, and the servants had a feast?” 

“ I rememher that,” said Migswood, smiling a contempt- 
uous but half-piteous smile. 

Mrs. Gardner rushed to a cabinet. The key was in the 
lock. She opened the drawer. 

“ Ah it is gone ! ” she cried ; “ it is gone ! ” 

She opened every other drawer in the cabinet. 

“ What was you looking for. ” 

“ The certificate of our marriage.” 

“Ah, you may look.” 

“It was in that drawer.” 

, “ W as it ? ” 

“ Don’t you believe me ? ” 

“ Oh, yes, if you say so.” 

“ I have read it, had it in my hand ; Philip told me to 
keep it in that drawer.” 

“I wouldn’t bother about t if I was you,” said Migs- 
wood, watching her in an amused and not altogether dis- 
satisfied manner, “ What name was he married in ? ” 

“ Gardner, of course. Oh, what is all this mystery?’ 

“ No mystery as I see on. What do he say hisself?” 
The gents downstairs tell me as he’s writ you a letter.” 

“ Read it,” she said, giving her the paper. 

“ I can’t read,” said Migswood ; “ what do he say ? ” 

The servant stooped down and picked up the notes. 

“ Be this the money as he’s left for yer ? They said he’d 
)»ut some in the letter.” 

“Tliat is your master’s money,” said Mrs. Gardner. 

Migswood laid it upon the table. 

“ Master’s money ! ” said the woman mockingly. 
“ Why don’t you ha’ done with your fine airs. A pretty 
master ! I ain’t got no master and no husband no more 
than you have, and the sooner you gets that into your 
wool-gathering little noddle the better.” 

Cai-oline Denton stood still and looked at the woman 
M’ithout seeing her, for her eyes were straining to follow her 
thoughts, which went over all the course of her life in En- 
gland ; her father’s death ; Philip Gardner’s kindness : her 
removal from the hotel near the scene of the fatal accident, 
by which she lost her father, to The Cottage; her surprise 
and fear when she found herself the inmate of her bene- 
factor’s house ; his resj)ectful kindness, followed by the 
offer of his hand; her gratitude; her struggle to forget 


CRUEL LONDOET. 


143 


Tristram Decker, whom she found she liad begun to love ; 
her resolve to obey the commands of her father, even though 
he were dead ; her marriage to Pliilip at the Proctor or 
Registrar’s office, as he called it ; his strange habits since 
then ; his mysterious comings and goings ; and latterly his 
unkindness to her. She sought for a clue to her position. 
She began to doubt and fear. 

“I will go to the place where we were married,” she 
said : “ tliat sliall be cleared for Willie’s sake. I must not 
give way; I must be bold and courageous for Willie. 
This is not the first time I have seen trouble.” 

“ Yes, you’ll Avant all your wits about you, but I wouldn’t 
bother if I w^ere you ; none of the other women did. When 
the game was over they just hooked it, and made no fuss. 
But I expect he took some trouble with you. 

“ The other women,” repeated Mrs. Gardner, “ the 
other women ” 

“I told you of ’em just now. None of them pretended 
as they w.ere married.” 

In spite of her brave efforts to stand up against the 
calamity that had befallen her, Mrs. Gardner, or Caroline 
Denton, whichever was her rightful name, staggered against 
the wall, and stood there with her hand upon her heart, 
uttering that cry of pain and wailing which had shaped 
itself into two words, “ Father ! Tristram ! ” when first 
she began to realize her trouble. 

“Don’t give way,” said Migswood. 

“ Tell me all,” said Caroline, in a hoarse whisper ; “ all.” 

“That’s wot the gents downstairs said I’d better do.” 

“ Tell me all. I am a poor, weak, foolish woman — a 
stranger; I know nothing — nothing.” 

“ The gents downstairs ’as took regular possession of 
The Cottage. Mr. Gardner, as he calls himself, ain’t bin 
honest, they says, and they has warrants to sell up The 
Cottage, and they thinks you’d better go into lodgings.” 

“ Yes ? ” 

“And they say as they suppose you knows as his name 
weren’t Gaidner at all, and they has no objections to your 
taking away any little things as you may have set your 
mind on.” 

“ What do they mean ? ” 

“ I wish you wouldn’t put on so much side, as they says 
at Essam. You can’t be so awful green as you makes out.” 

Caroline looked at her in hlnnk amazement. 


144 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“ Come now, do you mean to say as you thinks he ever 
took you to London at all? The other women used to call 
him Charlie; it’s always Charlies with us sort, I think, hut 
you preferred Phil. Well now, really, is American girls 
so jolly innocent as all that?” 

“ f don’t quite know what you mean, but I can see by 
your face that you are insulting me, and that you are cruel. 
No American woman would stamp on another in trouble.” 

“ Why, I’ve heard you tell that baby o’ yourn of wars 
and murders as Americans done again yon. But, there, it’s 
no business o’ mine, only you keeps on a axin’ of me ques- 
tions, and if you really are so blessed innocent as you 
makes out, why, it won’t do no harm to open your eyes a 
bit. Now, for h instance, you says Mr. Charlie — beg par- 
ding, Mr. Gardner — took you to London and married you 
and you had the writings ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Sure it were London ?” 

“Yes.” 

“ You’d never seen it before ? ” 

“ No, nor since.” 

“ My belief is as you never see it at all.” 

“Why do you say that? I could take you to the very 
hotel where we dined.” 

“ Well, I dunno ; you started in the morning and were 
back at night. It could be done, oh, yes. But there, it’s 
no business of mine.” 

“Yes it is ; don’t be unkind. I am sure we went to 
London I can never forget the busy streets, the carriages, 
the crowded stages, the noise and din.” 

“Then I’m wrong. It was London, of course; and 
why shouldn’t it be ? Oh, yes, it were London, of course.” 

“ Why, then, do you try to make me believe I have 
been mad or dreaming? Why do you like to torture me ? ” 

“ I baint a torturing of you. I be only answeiing what 
you axes me. But you do act so it sets niy teeth on edge. 
Good gracious, you ain’t the first girl that’s gone wrong.” 

Caroline looked at the savage woman out of her sad, 
sorrowful eyes, which would have rebuked any other she- 
dragon but Migswood, who bore the a])peal with ])erfect 
equanimity. She insisted upon regarding Mrs. Gardner as 
a woman who, in s])ite of a show of virtue, had fallen to 
her level; and it rather rejoiced her than otherwise to have 
80 good-looking a companion in sin and misfortune. 


CRUEL LONDON. 


145 


“You are a hard, cruel woman.” 

“Thank yer.” 

“ What liave I done that you should be so pitiless to 
me ? ” 

“ Oh, well, there, if you’re goinjv to call names I’ll go; 
mayhap I will lose my temper, and then I might shake you.” 

Migsvvood surveyed her victim with a calm, cold expres- 
sion. 

“ I can’t abear to have you a domineering over me in 
your ’igh virtuous way, as if I wos dirt. It ain’t what you 
says, it’s what you looks. I know what I am, and don’t set 
up for no better. But ” 

“Don’t shout at me ; I am very sorry ; I didn’t mean 
to be unkind. I ask your pardon. I shall not trouble you 
much longer. Are those persons you sj^oke of still in the 
house ? ” 

“ Yes, and they be going to stay all night ; and the bum- 
bailiff, he’s in the kitchen.” 

Caroline took the sleeping child out of the cot, and went 
down to the dining-room. 

“ Is this true that my servant tells me ? ’’she asked. 

“ What does she tell you, ma’am ? ” was Maclosky’s 
cautious reply. 

“ That my husband is a fugitive ; that his name is not 
Gardner; that I have been duped; that you are the right- 
ful owners of this cottage.” 

“I dinna ken about your being duped, but the man who 
wrote the letter you hold in your hand, who called himself 
Gardner, is a bankrupt; he has l)een living alifeof debauchery 
for years, and you are not the first, nor second, nor third 
misti’ess who have lived with him liere.” 

“ Sir, I am no mistress, I am his lawful wife, married 
according to your English law, and till to-day I had the . 
record of it.” » 

“ What, the certificate ? ” 

“ Yes, sir.” 

“Where were you married, ma’am? 

“ In London.” 

“In church ? ” 

“No.” 

“ Before a Registrar ? ” 

“ We went to an office, where they asked auestions, and 
put our names in a book, and gave my husband a docu- 
ment ” 


146 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“ Did he say his name was Philip Gardner ? 

“ Yes.” 

“ He lied there tlien, and can be prosecuted for it; but 
I diiuia tliink it vitiates the marriage.” 

“ Will you show me the authority under w’hich you act?” 

“ Tile officer lias it ; he’s down in the Kitchen.” 

“ 1 will go and fetch it,” said Robinson, leaving the 
room, and returning with the sheriff’s warrant of distress, 
which Mrs. Gardner looked at. 

“ If it were not for this letter I should think my hus- 
band were the victim of a conspiracy.” 

“ Indeed ! ” said Maclosky. “ Would ye like to see what 
the news]iapers say on the subject ? ” 

He took a paper from his pocket. 

“ I don’t think I would harass the lady any further,” 
said Robinson. 

“ She’d better know the truth,” said Maclosky, handing 
a newspaper to Caroline, with a marked paragraph to the 
following effect : 

“The Romance of Fraud. — A gentleman who, for 
several years, has been residing on a pretty estate in the Vale 
of Essam, where his doings have surprised and scandalized 
the respectable families of that district, turns out to be the 
director and manager of certain companies now in course 
of liquidation, in wdiich frauds to a considerable amount 
have been detected. Mr. Philip Gardner is the assumed 
name of this director, who will, we understand, be declared 
bankrupt to-morrow. His delightful retreat on the Avon 
will sj^eedily come under the hammer, and in these evil 
days there will not possibly be wanting sympathizers who 
will regard the downfall of the Essam landowner with some 
amount of sorrow, because he furnished his residence with 
choice pictures and rare china, thus redeeming his vulgar 
crime by proving himself to be a man of taste. We refrain 
from mentioning the young man’s real name, out of respect 
for his father, who is known in the city as an upright man, 
and who is, we believe, a serious sufferer by his son’s defal- 
cations.” 

“There, mem, that’s a clear straightforward statement,” 
said Maclosky, folditig up the paper and laying it down 
carefully upon the table. 

“ His father,” said Caroline ; “ he told me his father was 
dead.” 

“ And you’d better jest consider that it’s true, for you 


CRUEL LONDON. 


147 


might as well try to get butter out of a dog’s mouth, or 
justice out of a liquidator, as anything out of him ; for he 
jest hates ye, woman, — he jest regards you and such like as 
the ruin of his son.” 

The woman looked at him. She only half understood 
what he said. 

“ Is there anything else I can do for ye ? ” asked the 
Scotchman. 

She made no reply. 

“Look here, my dear,” said Robinson, rising and putting 
his arm familiarly on her shoulder. 

She recoiled from his touch. 

“ Oh, well, if we stand on our dignity so much, I have 
done,” said Robinson, who had cast bold and admiring 
glances at her during the painful scene. “I was going to 
give you some good advice.” 

She turned away from him without a word, and, address- 
ing herself to Mr. Maclosky Jones, said, — 

“ I’m a foreigner here, and don’t understand your 
customs. I am an entire stranger; which is the way to 
London ? ” 

“ The most sensible question ye could ask, though I’d 
take a steamer from Liverpool if I were a going to America.” 

She made no reply. 

“ The Essam station is jest close by, and I’ll order the 
carriage to take ye whenever ye conclude to go. You’ve 
got money, I understand, and we’re not disposed to tak it 
away from ye. I dinnat hold wi’ turning a young person 
adrift without funds.”* 

“ Good day, sir ; I don’t think I’ll trouble you any 
further.” 

Before Mr. Maclosky Jones had time to reply she left 
the room. 

“ A pretty impudent baggage ! ” said Mr. Fitzherbert 
Robinson. 

“Jest the sairt o’ woman to tempt a saint. Did ye re- 
gard her black ’een ? Aye, mon, I’ve seen the day I could 
jest o’ fallen deep in love with a wee bit foreigner lassie 
like that. She didna seem to regard your insinuatin’ ways, 
I’m ihinkin.” 

“ She’s a fool ! ” said Robinson. 


148 


CRUEL LONDON. 


CHAPTER IV. 

FALLEN AMONG THIEVES. 

“You want a lodging? Ah, bless yer swate face! 
said an old woman, pushing her way to Caroline’s side, as 
she stood bewildered among the crowd of passengers just 
emptied into the gaslight upon the arrival platform of the 
Great Western Railway at Paddington. “A nice clean 
place as ever ye see ; ah, let me carry the baby for ye.” 

The y)assenger — yesterday mistress of that lovely retreat 
on the Avon, to-day a fugitive and a wanderer — hugged the 
infant close to her breast, as the woman known as Irish 
Moll put out her arms. 

“ Ah, well, then. I’ll not touch the darlint. The saints 
bless and kape it ; but you’ve travelled a long way, and 
you’re a stranger intirely, and what’ll I do for ye at all? ” 

“ Is this your luggage 'i ” asked a porter, coming up to 
Mrs. Gardner, with a small bag in his hand. 

“ Yes,” said the woman. 

“ Are you expecting somebody to meet you, or can I 
get you a cab?” asked the porter, bent rather upon his fee 
than upon rendering assistance. 

“ No,” said- Irisii Moll promptly, “ she just wants a 
lodging for the night, and I’m the woman she’s expecting 
to get it for her.” 

Though accustomed to see many strange people, it oc- 
curred to the porter that there was something peculiar in 
the association of these two women — one of them delicate, 
beautiful, ladylike, for he could see that the passenger was 
all this even in the gaslight ; the other a common,, shufHing 
Irishwoman, who might have been a huckster, an orange- 
seller, or the director of a low lodging-house. Befoni he 
had time to do more than let the curious contrast of the 
figures dash through his muddled brain, his services were 
required in another direction, and he laid the hand-bag 
from Kssam down by its owner and disa])peared. 

“ Ah, give the bag to me; sure an’ I’ll carry it for ye. 
Come away with Molly, and I’ll get you some tay and a 


CRUEL LONDON, 


149 


bloater, and make ye as comfortable as the fine house you’ve 
left.” 

Caroline allowed herself to be led away. A stranger, 
bewildered and alone — the unaccustomed noise, the lights, 
the cries of porters, cabs dashing to and fro, j^eople pusliing 
hither and thither — it seemed as if this kindly speaking old 
woman was providentially sent to her help. She was ready 
to lean upon any one, lest the cruel crow<l should sweep 
over her like a torrent and leave her stranded. 

“ Let me take hould ov yer arm, darlint,” said Irish 
Moll ; “ ye are not used to this big town. Come aways 
wid ye, and we can find yer frinds in the mornin’.” 

In and out between cabs and horses, over the road, and 
into a street of shops, with here and there a blaze of light 
illuminating the two figures, the one grim, fawning, shuf- 
fling, and leading the other, a slight, well-dressed girl, with 
a child in lier arms. It was eleven o’clock. The heat'^of 
the sun had left behind it a clammy haze. From streets of 
shops and blazing gin palaces they came to a region of 
houses packed together in rows, with here and there gi'oups 
of men and women standing in the doorways, or lolling out 
of the windows to try and catch a breath of fresh air, but 
only succeeding in jiicking up the odors of stale vegetables 
or whiffs of strong tobacco. 

“ Ah, ye mustn’t mind the looks of Porter’s Buildings ; 
we aren’t rich, any of us, but we’re honest and we’re clane: 
and Molly Maloney isn’t the woman to bring ye anywhere 
wheres ye’ll not be comfortable.” 

More than once Mrs. Gardner was on the point of resist- 
ing her guide’s well-assumed authority ; but it seemed as 
if the woman read her thoughts and combated them with 
reassui ing words, and appeals to the saints and testimonials 
to her own honesty. 

They reached a narrow passage. 

“ Thei‘e, now, we’ll soon be at home,” said Irish Moll, 
“ and a cu]) of tay will cheer ye.” 

Irish Moll opened the door of a small house and brought 
the traveller into a i-oom furnished as a bed and sitting-room 
combined. The dai-kness was made dimly visible by a 
lamp which gave fortli more odor than light. But Molly 
Maloney, as the old hag delighted to call herself, turned 
the light up, and it fell,' as if with a flash of surprise, upon 
the })ale face of Caroline Denton, seated in a chair, and 
looking in a blank kind of way at nothing. 


150 


CRUEL LOiVDON. 


It might have occurred to her that the change from The 
Cottage to Porter’s Buildings was sometiiing too dreadful 
to tliink of; but no such thought tr()ui)led lier. She had a 
vague <lesire in her mind to tind out wlietlier she was legal- 
ly mairied or not. And since she liad left The Cottage 
this desire had almost given way to fear that inquiries would 
only lead to a miserable and uidiappy discovery. Her 
leading idea at the outset had been to tly from Essam ; to 
])ut The Cottage and its new possessors behind her ; to get 
away from the brutal taunts of Migswood ; to shut out tlie 
scene of her shame. Once she had thought of seeking con- 
solution and inspiration at her father’s grave, and then it 
dawned upon lier that she did not know wiiere he was 
buried. In that awful hour, when he was carried to a way- 
side hotel, dead before her face, she had lost all conscious- 
ness of things, and had more or less remained in a state of 
insensibility for many days. She remembered, during her 
waking moments, a kind voice, a constant attendant upon 
her, a young man who said he was lier father’s friend, and 
who ministered to her every want, only at the last to cast 
her adrift, a waif and stray upon the world. She had no 
papers in her jiossession as to her identity, no record of 
her father’s death, no certificate of her marriage, nothing. 
Mr. Gardner had made a clean sweep of all these documents, 
newspapers, and writings before leaving The Cottage and 
the beautiful woman who, for a time, had, even in his eyes, 
converted it into a jiaradise. 

While travelling to London, these facts, in a dreamy un- 
certain way, had got into her mind, and she realized more 
or less her position. She was a unit in the world — a thing 
without a name, a homeless wanderer, belonging to nobody ; 
and whether Heaven had given her a child in mockery, or 
out of love and mercy, she knew not ; she only knew that 
she loved it with all her heart and soul, and that she would 
never part with it and live. As she sat staring at nothing in 
the jiarlor of No. 5, Porter’s Buildings, she saw none of the 
indications of poverty about her. The tawdry fire-paper in 
the grate, covered with soot; the torn blind, yellow with 
dirt and age; the cracked cups and saucers that Molly 
Maloney placed upon the rickety table; the kettle she tried 
to boil over a lamp on the mantelshelf; the wanderer noted 
none of these things — her thoughts were far away, and in 
spite of her they were following in imagination the fortunes 
of Tristram Pecker. She fancied she saw him in some far 


CRUEL LOA'DOX 


151 


distant corner of America, and it almost comforted her to 
feel that he was thinking of her. He was the only friend 
she had in the world ; and she had seen him looking over 
the gate in the Vale of Essam. 

At first that visioti only imj)ressed her with the belief 
that he was dead; for they were superstitious i)eo})le in her 
southern liome, and the old negress who nursed lier as a 
child constantly saw ghosts and spirits. Since yesterday, 
however, her troubled mind Inid put out hands, as it were, 
to feel for something or somebody to cling to, and they had 
brouglit back the thought that perhaps Decker was coming 
to her ; that the vision she had seen was the shadow of his 
coming, the warning sent on before. While she was regard- 
ing this possibility with child-like satisfaction, liowever, the 
woman’s view of the situation intervened and made her 
shudder. What could she say to Tristram De:;ker? If lie 
sought her, it would be with his heart full of love for her, 
full of tender memories. And even the declaration, “I am 
married,” if it were not bitter enough, might be contradicted 
in his hearing, and he would look upon her as an outcast, a 
thing for scorn and contumely. 

Irish Moll went on talking to her lodger, who made her 
no answer, but presently rose and staggered to the bed. 

“ Ah, that’s right ; it’s rest ye want. Lie ye down and 
I’ll make the tay for ye ; and ye’ll find that bed as soft as a 
^ lady’s couch, that ye will.” 

The baby cried. Mrs. Gardner laid it upon the pillow, 
and, lying beside it, soothed it and stroked its head. 

“I’ll just go out now and buy ye the bit of su]>per this 
night, and something for the darlint’s breakfast. Will ye 
be giving me a few shillings to make the purchases? ” 

“ Give me a little water.” 

“Sure and the tay’ll be ready in less than a minute.” 

“ A little water.” 

Mrs. Maloney found some water after much searching. 
It was warm, but the fugitive drank it. 

“Ah, thank the saints you’re getting better. Did ye 
hear what I said about the supper and the few shillings?” 

“Yes,” she answered, taking tlie j)urse out of her pocket. 

It was in Molly’s hand the moment it a])peared. 

“ I’ll just take five shillin,” darlint, that’s all,” she said, 
examining the purse at the lamp; “that’s enough; sure 
five shillings will get you a might v fine supper and break- 
fast.” 


162 


CRUEL LONDOX. 


She handed the purse back, and as she left the house im- 
pressed upon “ tlie darlint” that she would return in a few 
minutes. But she came back no more. There were notes 
and gold in the wnnderei‘’s ]')urse. Wicked eyes leered at 
the money: cruel fingers clutched it. Irish Moll was a )iro- 
fessional thief , and something even worse. One of her 
favorite ‘'lays,” as they called the cruel business in Porlei-’s 
Buildings, was to ])ick up men or women at the gi*eat rail- 
way stations, unfortunate gilds flying fi-oin disgrace in rui-al 
districts, countrymen seeking lodgings — strangers, in fact, 
to London, for whom armies of jdunderers, men and 
women, are continually on the watch. The favorite sta- 
tions are Victoria, Charing Cross, and Waterloo; but Irish 
Moll varied her ojierations just as she varied her jilace of 
residence. She had only looked in upon Paddington as a 
speculation ; it was not one of her haunts, and it offered 
less facilities than the other big stations for her kind of 
work. The railway police are active men at Paddington, 
though IVIrs. Maloney managed to elude them on this her 
first important stroke of business in that locality. 

Left alone, the mother hummed a lullaby to the child, 
and jn-esenlly both slept where they lay. The shout of 
late revellers resounded in the court, and the shriek of 
women. But the Southern })lanter’s daughter heard them 
not. Exhausted nature was recouping itself. The mother 
lay by her child, with her arms under its little head, as 
calm and still as if she were dead. Presendy morning, 
dirty and grim, looked in upon them through the dusky 
window. The sun rarely deigned to cas*t even a solitary 
ray into the recesses of Porter’s Buildings. The first light 
of day was bathing Essam in a poetic mist, a gray halo, 
cool and fresh ; the hedges were decked with liquid dia- 
monds, birds M'ere singing on every tree; but morning at 
Porter’s Buildings was a different thing altogether. It 
seemed to liang about as , if it were indifferent, if not 
ashamed of the work it had to do ; for it had to reveal to 
men’s eyes the black spots in the world, the filth and deg- 
radation of life; to show the slimy dejiths to which 
human nature can fall. The first beams of morning never 
fell u])on so sweet a picture of suffering innocence as that 
which they came iqion at No. 5, Porter^s Buildings. Sleep, 
like his brother Death, had smoothed ail signs of care from 
the mother’s face. There was even a smile upon the half 


CRUEL LONDOX. 158 

parted lips ; the closed eyes spoke of pence and rest; and 
the little face beside them was rosy with health. 

It was hard to wake them so rudely. But the woman 
who came in with the morniiio; wanted to know, with many 
curses, what, in the name of Satan and other demons, she 
was doing in her bed, and in her room. The new lodger 
woke with a cry, and, clinging to her child, sat up and 
stared wildly about. The druidven owner of the bed said, 

“ Oh, yes, that was all vei-y fine, but what was she doing 
there?” Mrs. Gardner stammered something about an 
Irishwoman liaving brought her; whereupon tlie woman, 
wlio had come in with ribbons in her bonnet and silk upon 
her back, anatliernatized Irish Moll, and sujiposed she’d 
been at her little games again, and said, though she was her 
own mother, she’d suffer considerable torments if ever slie 
should step inside that door again. Then she informed the 
“infernal interloper ” and her “brat” that they’d better 
“get out quick.” Whereupon the stranger, who had been 
brought to this land flowing with milk and honey by a mis- 
guided father, slij)ped out at the door into a grimy ])assage, 
then into a court reeking with foul odors, and finally out 
into a 'broad deserted street. 

She attracted the attention of a policeman, for they >vere 
'the only ])ersons to be seen, though a crowd of S])arrows 
were chattering and quarrelling over their breakfasts in the 
roadway. 

The officer said it was a queer kind of time for a person 
to want an hotel. Where had she come from ? Wliat was 
she doing? Where did she live? He asked her many 
questions, and told her he had no idea where she could 
find a respectable hotel that would take her in. A baby 
and no luggage. Oh, she had left her luggage, she said, at 
the house where somebody had taken her for the night. 
The policeman said she should keep out of bad com])any. 
They had turned her out of the house, she said. What 
did she mean ? Who had she been with ? See di<ln’t 
know ; an Irishwoman. An Irishwoman, the policeman 
said, reflectively. Well, the best tiling siie could do was 
to go over to that early coffee-shop and get some coflee, 
and he would see if they would take her in at the hotel 
next door. He did not quite make out to his own satisfac- 
tion whether he was justified in hel|)ing her to this extent, 
but she looked something better that the sort of woman he 
thought her before he had spoken to her. 


154 


CRUEL LOUDON. 


She snt clown timidly in a corner of the coffee-lionae, 
where tlie last of the night’s beetles was just crawling lazily 
away beneath the fender. The attendant, rubbing his eyes, 
brought her a cup of coffee. She took out her ])urse to pay 
for it. Tiiere was no money in it. The purse was cmj>ty. 
She felt in lier pocket. Tlie attendant said, “ Oh, come, 
don’t go and say you ain’t got nothing.” she said tt.e woman 
had robbed her. What woman ? She didn’t know. She 
had forgotten her name. The old bewildered look came 
into her face. She looked at the empty purse ; she looked 
at the man. The policeman returned. “ Come along, mem,” 
he said, “ they’ll take you in at the Dragon.” “ She ain’t 
got no money,” said the coffee-shop keeper. The officer 
thereupon commenced to ask her a new set of questions. 
She answered them more or less vaguely, but in the end he 
said she had better go to the station with him, and he would 
see.what could be done. 

And when the sun broke out over the Vale of Essam, 
bursting through the morning mists, like a god illuminating 
the world with his presence, Caroline Virginia Gardner, 
friendless and penniless, was walking by the side of a police- 
man, gazed at by scavengers and workmen who found busi- 
ness thus early in the Edgeware Road. Within forty-eight 
liours the innocent American beauty had been hurled from 
a luxurious home in a smiling pastoral valley into the depths 
of cruel London’s most cruel slums, the hiding-places of 
Poverty and the dark haunts of Vice. 


CRUEL LONDON. 


155 



BOOK V. 


CHAPTER 1. 

ON BOTH SIDSS OF THE CHANNEL. 

If not the most luxuriant, it was the pleasantest little 
studio in St. John’s Wood. A north light, and furnished 
with odd things of all kinds and colors, it was sufficiently 
in disorder to indicate a bachelor tenant, a.id not without 
equal evidence of a feminine hand here and there. The 
jars and vasts, the picture-frames, the screens that seemed 
to lie carelessly about, were clean. The carpet had been 
brushed ; there were pipes, spill-cases, cards, and cigar- 
holders upon the mantelshelf. These things were lying 
about in admired disorder, but there was ho dust. An easy 
chaii* near the fireplace was adorned with a satin antima- 
cassar. A Japanese rug covered the centre of the room. The 
usual lay figure of an artist’s studio stood in a jaunty atti- 
tude, like an intoxicated barbarian, and wore a robe of In 
dian silk. A couch where a model had been reclining was 
placed in position, commanded by am easel, upon which was 
lying an open book. A vase of roses decorated a small 
cabinet close by, and there was something not only in this 
fact, but more still in the arrangement of the flowers, that 
betokened a woman’s touch. 

While we are contemplating this abode of art, there 
enters a tall, picturesque-looking young man, stalwart, 
broad of chest, his hair cut close to his head, his beard 
hanging in a silken m«ss upon his chest. He wears a suit 
of gray clothes, a w^hite shirt, no waistcoat, his jacket flung 
back, and upon his feet a pair of thick, untanned shoes. 

‘‘ Nonsense, my dear,” he was saying as he entered tlu* 


15C 


CRUEL LONDON. 


studio, — “ nonsense ; you must snut out all the world when 
you cross the portals of the temple, and only think of me.” 

The interesting lady who followed the artist had a letter 
and a newspaper in her hand. Sliglit in figure, with bright 
hazel eyes, she had in her face an expression of care which 
was not unfamiliar to the reader in the early days of this 
history, when Emily Sleaford had charge of the domestic 
economy of the corner house in Fitzroy Square. 

It was the first time that Fred Tavener had seen his 
■wife really troubled since their marriage, which had taken 
place some six months prior to this summer morning when 
we meet Mr. Tavener for the first time. They had been 
united in a quiet, unostentatious way, though Mr. Sleaford 
had offered Emily an imposing ceremony and breakfast. 
Their honeymoon had been spent on a sketching tour in 
Derbyshire, and Frank had been enabled to rent the house 
where he had previously lodged, with its pretty little studio 
built off the dining-room into the garden at the back. They 
were very happy, having married for love, though not 
necessarily to live in a cottage, and think bread and cheese 
and kisses the best of fare. Indeed, Frank always said he 
would not ask Emily to marry him until he was making a 
clear five hundred pounds a year, and Emily had always as 
consistently replied that the day he said he was ready he 
might but up the banns. She was a determined little lady, 
as we have already seen, Miss Emily Sleaford, but she was 
“ as good as gold’’ — and her idea of keeping up appearances 
was not to shape your life according to Mrs. Grundy, but 
according to the honorable laws of those moral ethics which 
are the outcome of honest hearts and well-balanced minds. 

“ This is my own particular and private preserve ; I am 
monarch here,” continued the artist, “ and a happy face is 
essential to the completion of my picture, which is to increase 
our income this year up to a thousand pounds.” 

lie put a powerful arm round the little figure, and 
kissed his wife upon the lips. She affected to rub her face 
afterwards, with the remark that she certainly would have 
him shaved ; she might as well be hugged by a bear. 
Frank went to the mantelshelf, lighted a cigarette, opened 
a window that looked upon a lawn dotted with fiowers, sat 
crosslegged upon a wooden chair, and contemplated his 
wife through a cloud of white smoke. She was a dainty 
picture, in an old-fashioned baby-dress, with long mittens 
upon her arms, and bows upon h-er shoulders. A frill at 


CRUEL LONDON. 157 

tlie bottom of her skirt fell short of a pair of pretty ankles, 
and feet in silk stockings, and buckled shoes. 

“ You volunteered to sit, my love, and you must go 
tlirough with it ; I know fellows who make their wives 
models whether they will or no. I don’t hold with that ; 
but when your wife insists upon sending your professional 
sitter about her business, and takes her place, why, then 
there must be no shirking it.” 

“ If anybody heard you, what a tyrant tliey would think 
you,” said Emily, sitting down upon the sofa. 

“ I should think they would,” he said, flinging the 
remainder of his cigarette into the garden, and closing the 
window. “ I am going to finish this picture before the 
month is out, whatever happens, and then I’ll show you 
the sort of tyrant I am. I'll drag you all over the Continent, 
through Switzerland, Italy, France — I don’t know where.” 

He was preparing his palette while he talked : a black- 
bird was piping aloud on the top of a tree in the garden, 
and Mrs. Tavener was vainly trying to bring back to her 
face the expression which had begun to play about the eye, 
which Tavener had transferred to his canvas. 

“When you are troubled, then is the time to lose 
yourself in occupation,” said the artist. 

“ Yes ; if you were sitting here, and I were drawing 
your picture, that would be a very different thing.” 

“ A very indifferent one, I should say, judging from the 
attempt you made the other day,” he replied. 

“ Frank, you are unkind.” 

“All my models say so.” 

“But really, dear, I don’t think I can sit still this 
morning.” 

The artist laid his palette down, went up to his wife, 
sat by her side, and in a voice of assumed banter, said, — 

“ Did it get tired of its work, then? Would it be a 
model, and then want to give it up just when it was be- 
coming useful ? Did it pretend to be strong-minded, and 
break down over the first bit of trouble that overtakes its 
family? Well, then, it shall come for a nice little walk 
round the garden, and have a talk and see what’s to be 
done.” 

The newspaper she held. in her hand contained the para- 
graph which Mr. Maclosky Jones had read to Mrs. Gardner, 
it was stale news now, but some friend of Emily had sent 
her another copy, fearing she might not have seen it. Tin* 


158 


CRUEL LONDON. 


letter was from mamma, who had gone to Boulogne with 
Jeremiah the Good to meet and commune with their son. 
It stated that to save Tom from a criminal prosecution his 
father would have to part with all their property, and that 
their only hope how was that he would be able to successfully 
renew his suit with Jane Crosby. Tom was very penitent, 
and for all their sakes it was better that they should become 
poor again, rather than suffer the stain upon their house of 
having a son sentenced to transportation. Jeremiah, she 
said, had behaved in the most magnanimous and paternal 
manner, having agreed to give up all he possessed, which, 
with the sale of Tom’s property, would cover a portion of 
the defalcations, sufficient to have the whole matter settled. 
“But I fear, love,” the letter continued, “ your father can 
never again do business in the city, and that we must try 
and make up an income by letting Fitzroy Square furnished, 
and living in humble lodgings. Your father thinks if we 
could take a little farm somewhere near the Thames, and 
keep fowls and have a boathouse, we might get along, and 
that Mr. Tavener could come down and paint there, as he 
is so fond of Thames subjects.” 

Emily read this again to Fred as they walked round and 
round the garden, a square bit of well-cultivated ground,' 
with creepers all over the walls, and a grass-plot with 
clumps of verbenas, geraniums, and fuchsias dotting it in 
small beds, that looked like splashes of gorgeous color upon 
a green ground. 

“ Yes, that’s kind about the Thames,” said Frank. 

“And so practical, isn’t it?” said Emily, with a regret- 
ful smile. 

“ Very ! They’d get two or three hundred a year from 
Fitzroy Square, and spend six on the Thames.” 

“Just what I was thinking.” 

“ But you ought to have married a rich man, Em, and 
then you could have stepped in and put it all right.” 

“ Nothing would put them all right, Frank ; poor father’s 
fortunes, ever since I can remember, have always been 
going up and down like a bucket in a well, and with the 
lively uncertanity of never knowing when it would come 
up empty or full. I don’t know what is to be done. Patty, 
however, ts the greatest puzzle. Mamma complains bitterly 
of her, though I really cannot see that tlie girl is to be 
blamed. ‘If I marry Mr. Roper,’ she says, ‘ he shall have 
the ten thousand pounds ; if I don’t, it lies in the bank until 


CRUEL LONDON. 


159 


I marry somebody else, and in that case I give it to my 
husband ; therefore it is impossible for me to help father 
with that money ; and it is no use being unkind about it.’ ” 

“Yes; I wouldn’t have given Patty credit for so much 
firmness,” said Tavener. 

“ She surprises me. I thought I knew her thoroughly ; 
I don’t. She offers no explanation ; she will neither say 
Yes nor No to Roper, now that father has given his con 
sent ; she goes on jiainting her water-color sunsets, and 
nursing her foot at you when you sit down and talk to her ; 
and 1 am quite beaten.” 

“ That ten thousand pounds will accumulate and grow,” 
replied Frank; “some day, if she does not marry, it will 
be a wonderful sum ; it might, if kept long enough at in- 
terest, become big enough to pay off the National Debt. 
There’s a nest egg for you ! ” 

“ What troubles me most is this proposed attack on 
Jane Crosby ; there is something so humiliating and degrad- 
ing in it that I have been thinking whether it is not ray 
duty to write to Miss Crosby, or to see her and tell her 
everything. I know she does not dislike Tom ; I fancy it 
is even possible she might marry him ; and if she did she 
would be a wretched woman. What ought I to do ? ” 

Frank Tavener stroked his beard, and drew his wife’s 
arm under bis own. 

“You know as well as I do that Tom is a wicked, bad 
fellow.” 

“ He is your brother, dear.” 

“ He is none the less a scoundrel,; — a heartless, design- 
ing,, cruel man.” * 

Mrs. Tavener .quickened her steps, and a hot glow came 
upon her face. 

“ It is a bitter thing to say, and the sin of the business 
is heaviest when one looks at it from a sister’s point of view. 
It may be selfish to say so, but think, Frank, what Patty 
and I lose in having for a brother a man like Tom, instead 
of a man we could be proud of. How delightful, for in- 
stance, if he could come and see us, and smoke a cigar with 
you ; but, there, it does not bear thinking of : if he does 
not end his days in prison or upon the gallows, I suppose 
we ought to be content.” 

“I think I should do nothing until your father and 
mother come home,” said Tavener; “ perhaps things are 
not so bad as they seem.” 


160 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“ Your motto is always ‘ wait,’ Frank,” r«j3li«d th« 
wife. 

“ Yes, it’s a good old motto. Didn’t I wait for you, 
and are you not here with your arm in mine, and wouldn’t 
1 give you a kiss and hug you where you stand if that 
wretched Mother Sniggers was not watching us from her 
back window ? She has been peeping behind her blind 
ever since we came out.” 

“ I suppose I shall have to settle it for myself,” said 
Mrs. Tavener ; “ you won’t help me.” 

“ I’m such an ass at family affairs, you know ; ask my 
advice, dear, when you’ve made up your mind and then 
you’ll see how I shall wake up.” 

“ I shall caution Jane Crosby.” 

“Very well, show me the letter when you have written 
it ; and now that burden is off your mind, come to work.” 

He put his arm round her in spite of Mother Sniggers. 
She leaned lovingly against his great, manly figure, and 
they re-entered the studio, which led Mother Sniggers to 
remark to herself that she didn’t believe any two people 
that were really married would conduct themselves so dis- 
gracefully in the broad face of day. 

While Fred Tavener was idealizing his wife on canvas, 
two of the persons of whom they had been talking were 
sitting by an hotel window, overlooking the sea at Boulogne, 
Lifter an excellent French breakfast, one of them smoking a 
cigar, both of them drinking claret. Mrs. Sleaford had 
L!:one out to do a little shopping. They were occupying a 
liandsome suite of rooms, and were to be seen in an evening 
imong'the happiest-looking people at the JEtablissement., 
where Tom played billiards, and Mr. Sleaford wandered in 
[ind out of the dancing and reading saloons, and otherwise 
conducted themselves like wealthy English people taking 
iheir ease. To protect them from the sun, which was 
flashing over the sea and making the city dazzling in its 
white beauty, an outer blind was carefully drawm. Tom 
Sleaford was sitting upon one chair, with his legs on another. 
Ilis father was walking up and down the room. Although 
they had been togetlier for some days in Boulogne, they 
had evidently not forgiven each other, nor had they alto- 
gether made up their differences. Jeremiah the Politic, 
vvith his hands beneath his coat tails, was walking solemnly 
to and fro, his bald head shining with the dew of summer 
heat, his cravat neatly tied, his bushy whiskers bushier than 


CRUEL LONDON, 


161 


ever, and his eyeglass dangling by a broad band of black 
ribbon, that made a long line across his white shirt front. 

“ It’s no good crying over spilt milk,” said Tom, con- 
templating his slippered feet, and smoking in a cairn, de- 
liberative way that irritated his father almost to madness, 
“have another glass of claret and sit down, governor.” 

“ Spilt milk ! If it had been honestly spilt,” cried Jere- 
miah, “ if the Cow of Fortune had lifted her leg and tilted 
it over, as she has done many a full bucket before now, 
then I could have borne it ; but to see my own son take 
the milk, not to say the cream, of a city career and literally 
throw it down the gutter, it is wicked, it is slapping For- 
tune in the face, and snapping your fingers at Fate.” 

Jeremiah liked metaphors. He caught up the idea of 
spilt milk with avidity. He carried it up and down the 
room. He flung it at Tom. He launched it at the ceiling. 
He shook it like a flag. He dashed it upon the table He 
stabbed the air with it. Finally he sighed, and drank a 
glass of claret. 

“ Spilt milk ! Only to think what the phrase means. 
Gold, independence, luxury, a dignified mind, happy old 
age — everything that makes life worth having — presented 
by Fortune to parched lips, and wilfully hurled to the 
ground ; maliciously poured into the earth, to be swallowed 
up by a fleeting palace in a valley, an alias,, a 7iom de 'plume,, 
and an immoral life. Tom, you will never know how all 
this lias cut me to the quick, bowed me down, and hum- 
/ bled your mother and sister, who looked up to you. 

“ liown, governor, down,” said Tom, interrupting his 
father. 

“ What do you- mean ? ” 

“ Looked down upon me,” repeated the son. 

“ I say up to you, Tom, and I am right.” 

“You always are, governor.” 

“No, sir, not always; I am sometimes wrong, very 
wrong. I ought to have insisted upon looking into your 
affairs long ago.” 

“ We have done those things we ought not to have done, 
and left undone those things we ought to have done, and 
for which we have got it hot,” said the profane spendthrift. 

“Yes; you do well to sneer at religion, at morality — 
at everything the human lieart holds good and pure and 
noble,” said Mr. Sleaford, raising his eyes to the oeiiiug with 
an air of piety and virtue. 


CRUEL LONDON. 


16: 


“ If you were a model father talking to me like that, gov- 
ernor, — if I believed you believed wdiat you are saying, it 
might have some effect on me, but — ” 

“ ‘ Honor thy father and thy mother,’ ” broke in Mr. 
Sleaford, “ ‘ that thy days may be long in the land.’ ” 

There was something almost pathetic in the old man’s 
delivery of the solemn commandment. 

“ It doesn’t say whether thy father is good or bad, — the 
divine law makes no qualification ; and so sure as you live, 
you will suffer for disobeying it. ‘ Honor thy father and 
thy mother ! ’ To the Allseeing eye it is enough that they 
are thy father and thy mother ; they are to be honored, and 
the son who slightingly disregards it may not cry over spilt 
milk, but his day of sorrow and misery is fixed as the stars, 
and his time will come.” 

The father stood before the son, who simply moved his 
position, pushing one chair a little further off and lighting 
afresh cigar. 

“ Do you hear what I say ? ” 

“ Rather.” 

“ It makes no impression, then? ” 

“ Yes ; capitally delivered. You might have a career 
in the Church, or in Parliament, if you were not too old. 

I don’t know which is best, your action or your eloquence.” 

Jeremiah rarely got into a passion, but the cool effron- 
tery of Tom Sleaford would have raised the pulse of the 
meekest father in Christendom. 

“Look you, Tom!” shouted Sleaford; “if you don’t ^ 
get up and treat w^hat I say with at least a show of respect, 
I’ll dash this decanter in your face. Get up, you scamp, get 
up ! ” 

Once moved, the old man grew reckless. He seized 
Tom by the collar, and dragged him out of his chair. It 
was the first time he had ever laid a hand upon his son in 
anger. 

“ Hollo, governor, what the devil are you doing? Arc 
you going off your chump ? ” exclaimed Tom, shaking him- 
self together. 

“ You swindling thief ! ” shrieked the father, “ how- 
dare you sit there and sneer at me? You m6an miserable 
scoundrel! ” 

“ Go it,” said Tom, retreating a few paces from the 
angry man. 

“ I brought you up, educated you, slaved Tor you, lied 


CRUEL LONDON. 


163 


for you — aye, and worse,” he went on, thinking of his trick 
with the Martin will. “ There is hardly a crime I wouldn’t 
have committed for you ; and you reward me with sneers, 
taunts, affronts, damned, conceited, thieving puppy ! ” 

The old man trembled with passion. Tom was silent. 
He laid down his cigar, and looked at his father without 
any attempt to conceal his astonishment. 

“ Yes, thieving puppy, 1 said. Those were my words. 
I disown you ! You are no son of mine. You are a base, 
ungrateful scamp. I could find it in my heart to brain you.” 

He took up the decanter and flung it down, in his rage, 
smashing it into a thousand pieces, and then rushed out of 
the room. A waiter hurried in as Mr. Sleaford went out, 
and asked if monsieur rung. Tom said no, and requested 
the waiter not to show his ugly face there again until he did 
ring. The servant bowed, and retired. Tom relighted his 
cig^r, and walked about the room with a quiet, steady, con- 
templative stride. It was something quite new for Mr. 
Sleaford to lash himself into a passion. But Tom had 
goaded him, and the young man began now to wonder that 
his father had stood his taunts and sneers so long. Tom 
was one of those born cowards who harass the weak and 
take liberties with those who give way to them. To sub- 
mit was in Tom’s view an invitation to aggression. He 
had not a spark of chivalry in his nature. The more Fitz- 
roy Square had given way to him in the old days, the more 
he had domineered over it. As his father consented to be 
sneered at, Tom sneered at him ; and the fact that he knew 
his father hadn’t clean hands in regard to finance and spec- 
ulation was not temporized by filial considerations. He 
would not make the sacrifices for his father which his father 
would make for him. His father was a rogue, and he was 
not willing to be lectured for being one himself by a con- 
federate, for he insisted upon regarding his father in that 
light, though he had himself been engaged in dishonest 
transactions of which his father had not the slightest knowl- 
edge. 

“ I won’t have him talking like that to me,” he said pres- 
ently to his mother, who came to him in tears. 

“But he is your father, and in trouble,” said Mrs. Slea- 
ford, laying down a lovely specimen of terra-cotta work 
which she had just purchased and carried home, to be fol- 
lowed by other parcels of ornamental goods which she 
thought Fatty would like, and which would look “ so nice ” 


164 


CRUEL LONDON. 


in the drawing-room at home, even if they were ultimately 
obliged to let the house. 

“If he were my father twenty times over I wouldn’t 
stand it,” said Tom. “If I am in -a hole, whose fault is it? 
Am I not his son, and am I not following in his' foot- 
steps ? ” 

“No, Tom, you are not,” said Mrs. Sleaford, with more 
emphasis than was customary with her ; “ and if you could 
see your poor father at this moment bathing his dear head 
with eau-de-Cologne, and sobbing, you wouldn’t have the 
heart to say so.” 

“ He wants his head bathing with something. He must 
be going mad ! Look at that decanter, smashed all to 
pieces. Supposing it had hit me in the face ! ” 

Tom kicked the glass about, and Mrs. Sleaford looked at 
it a little terror-stricken. 

“ He’s very sorry that he let his temper get the better 
of him, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Sleaford, “ but you shouldn’t 
say that you are following in Ids footsteps.” 

“ I say I am. He let me into the secrets of financing 
and finessing, and I am a worthy pupil.” 

“ Oh, liow can you say so, Tom ! Whatever your father 
may be, he has been a true and constant husband.” 

“ Has’ he ? ” 

“ Yes, he has, Tom. He never kept a den of infamy and 
had an alias — there ! ” 

Mrs. Sleaford felt herself grow quite cold. 

“ Oh, I’ve kept a den of infamy, have I ? ” 

“I will say, if I am killed for it the next minute, that 
your father was always a faithful husband, and never tired 
of scheming for his fandly.” 

The good lady rose, and, stamping her foot gently on the 
floor, she screamed in broken falsetto tones, — 

“ If I were your father, and strong, I would show you 
whetlier you should disgrace the family and then insult us ! 
There! I have taken your part till now; but to see that 
dear man sobbing and bathing Ids head, it would make the 
heart of a worm tui’n. Oh, you unfeeling, cruel son 1 Oh, 
you wicked, disgusting, young man, with your liarems and 
your creatures ! I declare my heart is breaking with it all ! ” 

Mrs. Sleaford felt as if she were suffocating. She stag- 
gered and fell upon a couch. Tom dashed water in her face, 
and poured brandy into her mouth. 


CRUEL LONDON. 


1«5 


“ Here’s a nice go ! ” said the affectionate son. “ I shall 
cut this altogether. Here, mother, don’t be absurd.” 

She did not move. He lifted her up in his arms and 
laid her upon the floor, near the window, and opened the 
door, so as to produce a current of air. Presently she re- 
covered. As soon as she did, Tom rang the bell, told the 
waiter to go and tell Mr. Sleafprd that Mrs. Sleaford wanted 
him ; and then, saying he would go and take a stroll until 
the storm had blown over, he left the room and went out to 
play billiards at the JEtablissement, 


CHAPTER II. 

“ THE TRAIL OF THE SERPENT.” 

A DISHEVELLED and miserable-looking couple, the Slea- 
fords, father and mother, sat upon the French sofa and 
vainly tried to comfort each other. Mrs. Sleaford laid her 
faded curls upon Jeremiah’s shoulder, and he put his arms 
affectionately about her. It was many and many along 
year since they had sat in so loving an attitude. The tears 
still stood in Jeremiah’s eyes# He didn’t speak for some 
time. He could see the loungers on the beach, he could 
hear the merry laugh of young people bathing, he saw 
white-sailed craft dancing upon the incoming tide ; it all 
looked so gay and happy outside that the scene only inten- 
sified his feeling of sorrow and misery. 

“ I have deserved it,” he said, presently. “ I have de- 
served his taunts and his sneers.” 

“To live to gray hairs and hear you say so! Don’t 
Jerry don’t.” 

“ To live to gray hairs and find your entire family 
against you, Mrs. Sleaford, that is the hardest cut of all ; we 
haven’t a dutiful child, to say nothing of a loving and affec- 
tionate one.” 

“ Patty is only wilful, my dear. She is good, I’m sure. 
Don’t let us, in our sorrow, do her an injustice. Ah, Jere- 
jniah, w« have lived long enough, I think, — too long, per- 
haps.” 


166 


CRUEL LONDON. 


Jeremiah sighed, and whisked a fly away that persisted 
upon biting his hand, 

“ If Tom had earned the right to speak as he has done 
to-day, that would have been another matter ; but a young 
man who has been living a life of secret debauchery and 
open dishonesty, and who comes to us a bankrupt, and 
really charged with being a swindler, it is too much — too 
much ! ” 

“ It is indeed ! It is very cruel ! ’’ 

“ I introduced him into finance, it’s true, and a man who 
makes his way among Jackals has to do dirty work. 
Mining itself is not clean — even gold ore dirties the hands, 
and you have to fight with the weapons other people fight 
with in the city ; and if he combines debauchery with it, 
and the manufacture of illegal scrip, is that my fault? ” 

Jeremiah’s mixed metaphors rather impressed Mrs. Slea- 
ford with the truth of his remarks, and she was glad that he 
no longer accused himself; though the next moment he 
disappointed her by grovelling metaphorically at Tom’s 
feet. 

“ But that is easily said,” he continued, with a sigh “ my 
dear Beatrice Maud.” 

“ Ah, it is some consolation to hear you call me by that 
name, Jerry dear.” 

“ I arn not myself, love, to-day,” he replied, as if he 
struggled against an exhibition of weakness. “ If I were a 
Roman Catliolic — which I am not, thank goodness, and I 
will never desert the Protestant faith, for which our fathers 
fought and bled, but I can now understand the use of the 
Confessional — if I were a Romanist, I would seek the 
nearest priest and confess.” 

“ Open your heart to Beatrice Maud,” said the faded 
neutral lady, whose head now almost pressed his cheek. 

“Don’t be foolish, Mrs. Sleaford, my love; let us con- 
sider our time of life : it behoves us to be dignified, even 
in our grief. I am not a good man, love ; no, I am not ; I’m 
a time-server, and some of my business transactions won’t 
bear investigation. As I said before, I deserve the abuse 
of my son ; I don’t deserve the respect of ray children, and 
I have not been always kind to you.” 

“ I wouldn’t say so ; on the contrary, dear.” 

“ You are of a patient dis23osition, love ; you were made 
to bend before the storm ; but let us hope we may cultivate 
mutual love in our old age, and in the retirement of a little 


CRUEL LONDON, 


167 


house on the Thames, away from the excitement and allure- 
ments of London. I am a beaten man, Maudy, dear, a 
beaten, broken man ; but it is hard, in the days of our gray- 
ness and our sorrow, not to have the sympathy of our 
children.” 

“ Emily sympathizes.” 

“ Yes, that’s true ; she opposed us in our schemes for 
her. If she had married a rich husband things might have 
been different, because she is clever and would have man- 
aged him. But we must not altogether despair. I have 
heard that some of these painters make even very large in- 
comes, and 1 saw a paragraph the .other day which spoke 
very highly of Tavener’s work. It was a happy thought 
of yours, love, the little place on the Thames ; Emmy would 
keep it going in tlie summer, no doubt, for Tavener is fond 
of landscape backings for his figure subjects, they say. He 
likes to have his people in boats fishing or making love 
with swans about. That picture which Kerman gave you 
is worth a lot of money now,. and I think you would be 
allowed to sell it ; the trustees could manage that for you.” 

“Yes, dear ; it would help us to furnish the farm, and 
might be turned into chickens and things.” 

“ Practical as you are fond, my love; with such a dear 
wife I ought not to repine. I will not ; I will cheer up, 
dear; we will both cheer up.” 

“Yes, dear, we will.” 

They did. They cheered up over a bottle of champagne. 
They cheered up -over a little joint. They went out and 
cheered up on the beach. They cheered up in a little sail- 
ing-boat round the pier. They cheered up in the sun. They 
cheered up over imaginary j^ictures of a retired life near 
Cookharn, wdth a boat and an awning over it, a tow-line, 
and a punt for fishing. They cheered up with calculations 
of the ease with wdiich a really pleasant house on the river 
could be kept up. A cow or two, to give them milk and 
butter ; plenty of fowls to supply them with eggs ; corn to 
make their bread, and mint in the garden ready for the 
earliest lamb. Jeremiah said he didn’t care if he never 
went into the city again. The Stock Exchange was an un- 
natural motl^r ; it had behaved brutally to liim. He had 
respected all its traditions, and had both bulled and beared 
with fearlessness and daring. If he bad taken trifling ad- 
vantages of the weakness of some of its laws, he had only 
done what others did and would do to the end of the 


168 


CRUEL LONDON. 


chapter. Let him get clear of his liabilities this once, and 
no more city for him. Ambition was over for him, since 
his children no longer sympathized with his labors. Wl\,at 
was gohl to him ? Ilis wants were few. Ilis wife was a 
thoughtful, economical woman. Did he go to the city 
every day because he liked it ? Was Mr. Maclosky Jones the 
sort of man he would select for a boon companion except 
in the way of business? Did Mr. Fitzherbert Robinson 
appeal to his sentiments of recitude on the subject of the 
position which woman should hold in the world? 

It was a delightful relief for Jeremiah to sit in the 
stern sheets of the little boat, gliding away before the gentle 
southern breeze, and talk frankly of the past and the future. 

City men, after all, were not his sort. He ought to 
have gone to the Bar, or devoted himself to literature.^ 
“We all make mistakes,” Jeremiah continued, with a 
sigh, “ all of us, however thoughtfully we may consider our 
course in life at the outset.” 

He was too sanguine and too trustful for the city. Men 
deceived him. He believed in their facts and figures too 
easily. His nature, though he didn’t want to boast, was 
naturally confiding and honest ; and that was no good in 
the city. At the Bar, dealing with the affairs of Other 
people, his only desire would, of course, have been to serve 
his clients. That would have suited his constitutional 
liberality. Now, in. the city, self is your first consideration, 
and that was the secret of his failure as a financier. Yes, 
he had failed ; he was ready to admit it. No, he would be 
frank now. He was not a success as a city man, financier, 
banker, or promoter. He had simply mistaken his avoca- 
tion. It was a sad thing when a young man took the 
wrong turning in life. But how were you always to know ? 
You stood at the commencement of four branching roads 
— law, literature, art, commerce. You take Law, as he 
did. Well, that might have been well and properly 
followed ; but, as you advanced, you came to another 
turning — a beautiful, flowery-looking highway, with luxu- 
riant hedges, rosy fruits, a soft, carpet-like flooring. 

“ To the City, Finance and Fortune ; To the Gold Mines. 
You leave the uninteresting path of the law, and take the 
new turning and what do you find at the end ? ” 

“ A quiet little farm on the Thames,” said Mrs. Sleaford, 
for Jeremiah paused as if he desired her to reply. 

“ Exactly ; you have every right to expect a palace, with 


CRUEL LONDON. 


169 


carriages and horses and plenty of money ; you find a cot- 
tage and a river, a cow or two, and some poultry. Very 
well said, my love ; that was a bright thought of yours. A 
cottage for a palace is hardly what we had a right to expect ; 
but if we can induce the angel Content to dwell with us, 
and have Tavener and our dear Emily down in the summer, 
we may even yet go gently to our last retiring place, hand 
in hand, though our only son strives to bring our gray hairs 
with sorrow to the grave.” 

“ Don’t think of him any more to-day, dear : perhaps he 
will be penitent ; and if he should marry Jane Crosby, I’m 
sure you would enjoy an occasional visit to your native 
county.” 

“ True, Beatrice Maud, true ; trouble and poverty seem 
to enlarge your views : some poet has said that genius is 
the brighter, like stars on a frosty night, for being pinched 
a little ; you bear out the simile, dear. If Torn asks my 
forgiveness, and Jane Crosby should accept him, I will not 
stahd, in the way of the Sleafords being once more a united 
family.” 

“ Miss Crosby is proud,” said Mrs. Sleaford, gathering 
courage to talk under tlie influence of Jeremiah’s compli- 
ments : “ she may not like to marry a bankrupt.” 

“My dear,'Tom is not a bankrupt; his bankruptcy 
was duly annulled yesterday ; the recovery of Iris estate 
on the Avon, and the ti-ansfer of all his shares in Asphaltes 
and in the Shif)build-ing Company, enabled my own solicitor 
to arrange that for him.” 

“ But there was something else,” remarked Mrs. Sleaford, 
timidly. 

“ The illegal scrip ; as we are alone on the ocean, with 
sailors who do not understand the English language, I need 
not be particular, I may call a spade a spade. He forged 
£25,000 worth of Roughened Asphaltic scrip. My solicitor 
insisted upon merely calling it an over-issue at the directors’ 
meeting, arrd he induced the Financial Society, which had 
been extended in numbers and operations, to give it up in 
return for the whole of my new shares in the Omaha Silver 
Company. I transferred them ; dnd when my remaining 
assets are realized to pay the calls on Cemeteries, my Stock 
Exchange diHerences, and other things, I shall not have a 
penny. I am cleaned out ; and vvdiat is worse, I am no 
longer a member of the Stock Exchange, nor can I any more 
do business in Threadneedle Street. However, I need not 


170 


CRUEL LONDOiV. 


go into that, love ; I am a failure as a City man, and ambi- 
tion is over for me.” 

“ Miss Crosby might see that paragraph in the papers ? ” 

“ She wouldn’t understand it if she did, and it only ap- 
peared ill one journal, It was very good of Roper to get a 
com])liment to me added to the tail of it: tliat was all he 
could do when he found they would not withdraw the 
paragraph* altogether. Considering the danger we have 
had to engineer through, we have reason to congratulate 
ourselves ; we have even got through better than a cat 
, through a skylight, to use Emily’s favorite phrase. And 
Tom, instead of being grateful to me, treats me like a menial, 
a person to be despised — his own fatlier ! If they had prose- 
cuted him he would have been transported for life ; and 
now, instead of playing billiards and smoking cigars in a 
French saloon, with the sea rolling up to its very windows, 
he might have been breaking stones with chains on his 
legs.” 

“ Don’t love, don’t ; it is too dreadful ! I don’t think he 
is amusing himself, love; I feel sure he is very miserable, 
waiting for us to return and make it all up.” 

But Jeremiah knew his son Tom better than his mother 
did, or affected to do. He had spotted his very occupation. 
Tom was astonishing a crack French player at the French- 
man’s own game, and on his own table. When Tom ar- 
ranged to meet his father and mother at Boulogne, it was 
not from any idea that the French seaport could any longer 
give immunity to him from debt or fraud. He was actuated 
by a desire for the time being to put the sea between him- 
self and the woman he had deceived, and to try his hand at 
French billiards. He remembered his triumphs during a 
short tour in France, and he had been enabled to keep up 
his practice both in French and English billiards at The 
Cottage, where he had a billiard-room containing both kinds 
of tables. He had taught Caroline billiards, and had played 
many a game with her during his weekly visits to their pic- 
turesque home. When the last remnant of his conscience 
upbraided him for his treatment of the Southern planter’s 
daughter, he soothed it by the reflection that he had divided 
his last bit of ready money with her. He had a thousand 
pounds ; he gave her half of it. How bitterly ho would 
have regretted this act of generosity, if he had known that 
slie left it on the floor where it had fallen from his cruel letter ; 
and that Migswood, after laying it down upon the dressing- 


CRUEL LONDON. 


171 

table, and contemplating it there for some time, had resolved 
to consider the money as a gift of fortune, in return for all 
she had suffered in and out of gaol. It was quite an hour 
before she made up her mind to put it in her pocket and 
devote it to her own use. Slie weighed tlie chances of 
detection and punislunent. It might be “ a lifer” if she was 
found out. She could swear the missus gave it to her. She 
knew t]ip missus had purposely not touched it, that the 
broken-hearted woman despised it : she knew and wondered 
at tliat. Then she had reviewed her prospects. Once more 
out of a place, once more cast on the world, and not a soul 
to appeal to, nobody to employ her at Essam, for she was a. 
gaol bird, and the horror of the board of guardians who had 
to keep her children, Migswood decided to run the risk of 
detection and imprisonment; and Caroline Denton had gone 
into the world with her own ten £10 notes, the balance, 
with a few sovereigns, of the only money left by her father. 
How she had been robbed of this we have already seen. 
The conclusion of the incident fell under Tom Sleaford’s 
eyes, when, after pocketing his winnings at billiards, he 
sat down to smoke a quiet cigar and read the London 
papers. 

“martlebone police court. 

“The Night Side of London. — A too well-known dis- 
reputable woman, rejoicing in the cognomen of “ Irish 
Moll,” was charged with stealing ten £10 notes, and £3 10s. 
in gold and silver, from the person of Caroline Gardner, a 
married woman, who said she was an American, and whose 
appearance in court excited commiseration on account of 
her prepossessing manners and her evident mental suffering. 
She said that she had come to London from the country, 
and that the prisoner at the depot (she called the railway 
station a depot, and could not be prevailed upon to say 
from what part of the country she came ) had pressed her 
to lodge at her house, and, being a stranger and very tired, 
she had gdne with her ; that she gave her her purse, contain- 
ing the above sum, to make purchases at a ‘grocery store,’ 
and that when she wanted some money afterwards the purse 
was empty. ‘ Irish Moll ’ called upon all the saints to 
testify that, beyond taking three shillings for the food she 
was going to buy, she had not touched a blessed farthing. 
It appeared, however, that Mrs. Maloney, to give the 


IT2 


CRUEL LONDON. 


woman her own title, went out under the pretense of return- 
ing to give the lodger her supper ; that she never returned ; 
and that the room, in the notorious region of Porter’s Build- 
ings, was not her own, but the apartments of her daughter, 
known as ‘ Tipperary Kate,’ who had returned home drunk, 
and turned tlie prosecutor (who had a baby in her arms) 
out of the house. Tipperary Kate, ’ dressed in the height 
of Porter’s Buildings’ fashion, vowed ( in spite of the magis- 
trate’s repeated request for silence) that she was as innocent 
as the babe unborn of going home drunk, not a drop hav- 
ing passed her lips for a week ; and was it for her to know 
the respectability of the lady w’ho was enjoying her ’ospitality 
unknown to her? The magistrate tried to induce Mrs. 
Gardner to ex])lain how it was she came to be friendless 
and alone in London, but the prepossessing though meti- 
tally-sLiffering young person only said she wished to be 
allowed to go. In re))ly to the question whether she had 
any money, she said ‘No.’ The magistrate said he sliould 
insist upon her being taken to the Union until the authori- 
ties could make inquiries about lier and help her. Where- 
upon the benevolent Miss Weaver came forward and volun- 
teered to take chai-ge of the young woman and her child 
until such time as inquiries could be instituted concerning 
her. Miss Weaver went over to the friendless but interest- 
ing young woman, and talked to her in her benevolent way ; 
and the })rosecutor eventually left the court with her, the 
magistrate ordering Miss Weaver to receive ten pounds 
from the poor-box. ‘ Irish Moll ’ was committed for trial. 
Detective Buncher, who had the case in hand, said the 
prisoner could easily convert the notes. Unfortunately, 
there were too many receivers in London to leave her any 
difficulty in this direction. She had in her possession, when 
taken, £14. The detective said it was quite possible the 
thieves’ bankers, who had converted the notes for her, had 
not given her more than £15 for them. The magistrate 
said he was glad to be able to inform Mr. Smithers, who 
had come to watch this case for the Female Protection 
Society, that he had, during the course of this morning’s 
business, committed two well-known receivers for trial.” 

Tom read the paragraph twice over.. It would even 
outrage his bit of humanity to say that he did not feel sorry 
for Miss Weaver’s two new objects of charity. His prevail- 
ing emotion, however, was one of fear. He had quite 
counted upon Caroline going back to Amerioa. Latterly 


CRUEL LONDON, 


173 


she had spoken scdrnfully of England and of Englisli people. 
With five hundred pounds she could have no excuse for 
bringing him into disgrace. Besides, Migswood had told 
him that she had a lover in America ; she had heard her 
talk of him ; she had more than once spoken of him when 
she was talking to herself, as washer constant habit. Aligs- 
wood had forced herself somewhat into his confidence, hav- 
ing seen such varied service at The Cottage, and being in a 
position at any time to make startling revelations to the 
latest Mrs. Gardner. Caroline in London, however, was a 
new trouble, inasmuch as his comfortable return thither, 
after the settlement of his affairs, formed part of his 
schemes for the future. Sometimes he had thought her a 
little mad, and the police report almost contained a sugges- 
tion of insanity. It was some satisfaction to see that she 
had declined to say what part of the country she came 
from. What a report there might have been in the papers 
if she had spoken of The Cottage ! He wondered, as he 
smoked, whether it would be a good idea to go to Miss 
Weaver and ‘square,’ her : he had no doubt he could. Or 
whether it would not be better for him to “ cut England” 
altogether. He knew a fellow who had been obliged to go 
to Spain, and who was doing very well there, having learned 
the language sutficiently well in twelve months to make 
a business as a broker and importer of English specialties. 
On the whole, he came to the conclusion that it would be 
best to see Miss Weaver. If there was any truth in the 
scandalous reports that were circulated about that chari- 
table person’s benevolent operations, he would not find it 
difficult to neutralize any action on the part of Caroline 
against him. The missing five hundred pounds also troubled 
him. No mention was made of that in the police report. 
Was it possible that Jones and Robinson had cheated her 
out of it ? Quite. He upbraided himself for trusting 
them. They were equal to the vallany of abstracting the 
money from.hi8 sealed envelope. If that were so, he would 
recover it. If it were for nothing else, it was worth while 
calling on Miss Weaver. In the meantime he would write 
to Jane Crosby, asking her if .any of his friends said^ any- 
thing to her calculated to discredit him in her good opinion, 
not to believe it until she had heard his version of the story. 
It had occurred to him that Jabez Thompson, who somehow 
knew everything, might be on his track. 

“ Some person published a malicious statement about 


174 ' 


CRUEL LONDOLL. 


me; yon said we conld befriends if no closer relationship 
might exist, and I rely upon your kindly regard, at all events. 
It is true I have had serious losses, and that I mustrstart in 
the world afresh. Many an older man than I, and many a 
better, has been commercially and financially unfortunate. 

I am conscious of no dishonor, and I begin the world to-day 
with a light heart.” 

Pausing to think what else he should say, he remarked 
to himself , “ It’s true enough, my first day’s business, since 
my unlooked-for and undeserved misfortunes, yields me a 
thousand francs, and I never played French billiards 
better in my life.” 

He went on with the letter, — 

“ May I hope to be allowed to come and shoot on the first ? 
I know you always have a pleasant little party. If Mr. 
Jabez Tompson objects to me, ask him to give me a chance 
of justifying myself in his eyes. I know he hates me, but 
I assure you it is not my fault. He has formed quite an 
erroneous opinion of me, and, above all that, it makes me 
feel very unhappy to think that I an^ in danger of growing 
out of your good opinion ; and I claim the fulfilment ol 
your word on that night when I disclosed my heart’s best 
hopes to you, that we should always be friends.” 

Leaning back in his chair and lighting a fresh cigar, he 
said, — 

‘‘ I think that will fetch her. I should like to lick Mr. 
Thompson, he’s such a sly old fox.” 

Having sealed up the letter, he walked to the Post-office, 
and dropped it into the box, and then strolled into the hotel 
to dinner. 

“ Madame and monsieur will prefer to dine at 'ze tahlt 
d'hote to-day,” said the landlord. 

“ That will suit me, too,” said Tom. 

“ They can’t bully me there,” he thought ; “ and I’ll do 
the amiable to-night. I was rather stiff on the old man 
this morning I expect. By Jove ! I never saw him in a real 
passion before ; and madarae — ma mere — she let me have it, 
too. Ah, well, it’s all in a lifetime, it doesn’t matter ; a 
very small bit of soft solder will settle them both.” 

He went to his room and dressed. He always dressed 
for dinner. It was not only an inexpensive luxury, but it 
was highly respectable. A man who every day dresses for 
dinner under all circumstances shows that he has been ac- 
customed to good society. Moreover, Tom Sleaford always 


CRUEL LONDON. 


175 


said that a “ fellow feels more fit ” in his dress clothes, 
especially for billiards. So he dressed for table d'hote., and 
entered the room with his mother on his arm, lookingquite 
distinguished and wealthy. They “made it up” over 
dinner. Tom was studiously polite to his father, and def- 
erentially attentive to his mother. He held a conversation 
in French with a neighbor, and shed quite a halo of fashion 
about the Sleaford party. Over coffee, in their sitting-room 
Tom apologized to his father, and was ostentatiously for- 
given ; and when he came in early from the billiard-room 
to have a chat before going to bed, Mr. Jeremiah Sleaford 
unfolded unto his son a new idea he had for a Discount 
and Banking Company, which could easily be started with 
10,000/., and, retained exclusively in their own hands, could 
be worked most successfully. 

“ Unity is strength, Tom,” said Jeremiah, passing his 
hand over his white and open forehead. “ We have never 
worked for our own hands ; be true to your father, Tom’; 
listen to his advice, and with our united experience, and my 
knowledge of society, our efforts, honestly directed, Tom, — 
no more mistakes, no more tricks, honest administration in 
future, — and something tells me that ‘ The West End Bank 
of Discount and Deposit ’ might be worked into a great and 
thriving institution.” 

“But what about the little place on the Thames?” Tom 
asked ; “ final retirement from the city ? ” 

“ I adhere to both, Tom ; I never go from my word. 
Your mother shall let the corner house in Fitzroy Square; 
we will take the little house on the Thames, and an office 
in some West End thoroughfare. I would come to town 
three or four days a week; you would be there every day; 
and in the summer your mother and Patty couldn’t be dull, 
because there would be Tavener painting his Thames back- 
grounds, and Emily rowing her mother on the river ; and 
with energy and honesty, and judicious, advertising, I have 
not a doubt that ‘The West End Bank of Discount and 
Deposit ’ would prove to us the truth of the axiom, which 
I always think so comforting, that ‘ everything happens for 
the best.’ ” 

“ All right, governor, there’s no harm in thinking it over 
and discussing it. When do you propose to go to town ? ” 
“ To-morrow,” said Mr. Sleaford, with a cheerful glance 
at his face in the mirror over the mantelshelf, — “ to-morrow, 
Tom ; and we’ll sketch out a prospectus ere we go. If a 


176 


CRUEL LONDON. 


few ornamental names are wanted, I can get them. A 
couple of clergymen on the direction would be useful; and 
we might have a touch of philanthropy in it.” 

“ Yes ; benevolence is a good bait, and it pays, too,” said 
Tom, stretching his legs out in the attitude which had been 
so offensive to his father only a few hours previously. 

“ In these days,” said Jeremiah the Enterprising and Be- 
nevolent, as if rehearsing a portion of the prospectus, “ when 
the humblest tradesman is compelled to buy for ' ready 
money in order to hold his own against Co-operative Stores, 
— when small manufacturers find the necessity of financial 
assistance for the comj)letion of contracts, — when even the 
working man is compelled to pawn his furniture to meet 
the increasing demands of necessary creditors, — the pro- 
moters have come to the conclusion that they can legiti- 
mately help the needy though honest toiler without the de- 
sire or the necessity of making a profit on that class of 
business ; contented, while dealing with larger and more 
extended transactions, to stoop, on philanthropical grounds, 
to the aid of their humbler fellow-creatures; conscious, 
while doing so, they are helping, if indirectly, to advance 
the interests of the nation at large, and thereby, even from 
a business point of view, promoting the increase of com- 
mercial, banking, and financial transactions. Upon this 
industrial class of business the directors have entered into 
an agreement under no circumstances to charge a higher 
rate of interest than five per cent per annum ! ” 

“ Capital ! ” exclaimed Tom, “ worthy of. your old self 
governor ; I congratulate you on the return of your business 
activity. A capital idea ! I shall say good-night, now : 
I want to get up early.” 

“ Good-night, Tom,” said the gentleman who had given 
up finance for ever. “Glad you like the scheme. Your 
mother’s fast asleep by this time; I shall sit up for an hour 
and make a rough draft of the prospectus, so that we can 
talk it but with data before us to-morrow. Eh? ” 

“ All right, sir ! Good-night ! ” 

Mr. Jeremiah Sleaford sat far into the night inventing 
his new scheme of banking and finance; and in the interest 
of provident and successful toilers in the humbler middle 
class of life, tvho sought in vain for a profitable and safe 
inves-tmeut of their savings, he fashioned a scheme of de- 
posit which should bear a secured interest of twenty per 
cent. It was quite a delightful discovery to Mr. Sleaford, 


CRUEL LONDON. 


177 


this idea of the custoraers of a bank sharing in the profits 
of its business. “ The established institutions of the day,” 
wrote the new Apostle of Banking, “ pay a small and insig- 
nificant interest on deposits, and, using the money, make 
for themselves and their shareholders from ten • to even 
forty and fifty per cent. The West End Bank of Discount 
and Deposit will accept deposits for three, six, and twelve 
months, and pay an interest on the same at the rate of 
twenty per cent, with bonuses from time to time out of the 
profits made beyond that amount, thus giving to its cus- 
tomers the full benefit of its successful enterprise,' the ex- 
perience of its manager, and the unique advantages which 
it possesses for the profitable ap])lication and use of money.” 

It was daylight wlien he went to bed; and it seemed to him, 
also, as if the morning of his best ho]'»es were also breaking 
bright and promising after the clouds of a stormy night. 
Hope was constant in the Sleaford breast. Dimmed for a 
moment by misfortune, it only shone the brighter upon the 
darker background. For Jeremiah Sleaford, as he laid his 
head by the side of Beatrice Maud’s nightcap, the New Bank 
was as good as in existence. If for the time being he seemed 
untrue to his faith in mines, he came back to it in his sleep. 
He dreamed that he was sole possessor of a gold region 
which was bringing him in a thousand a day. Jeremiah was 
very happy in his sleep. 


CHAPTER III. 

MISS weaver’s retreat. 

The enemies of Miss Weaver said she was an impostor. 

It seemed a singular freak of calumny to point the finger 
of scorn at so charitable and so beautiful a woman as the lady 
of “ The Retreat.” “ Carriages and horses and plenty of 
money,’ to quote a Sleafordism, would surely not be engaged 
in the practical work of charity as a trade. Miss Weaver’s 
friends hardly considered the charge worthy of an answer. 
Perhaps the persistent, silent contempt which the founder of 
“ The Retreat ” meted out to envious detractors and libellers 
rather encouraged than deterred vicious criticism. Miss 


178 


CRUEL LONDON. 


Weaver would remark, in her patient, self-denying way, that 
while her works were her only answers to slander, the 
armor of a good conscience protected her from the per- 
sonal suffering which envious shafts might otherwise inflict. 
If slie had any feeling in the matter, it was one of regret 
that her suj^porters should have to endure some of the 
odium of attacks levelled at her only. She had her own 
theory about the libels, and she might some day explain it, 
but not yet. Major Wenn knew that her family were much 
opposed to what they called the sacrifice of her life and 
prospects for creatures who should be left to wallow in the 
gutter. But she had put her hand to the plough, and she 
would go on. 

Miss Weaver’s most active enemies found a malicious 
delight in saying that she was never known to take a girl 
or woman into her “ Retreat ” without being sure that the 
action would be well advertised. They said it was a point 
with her to take up a case in the presence of the public. 
She haunted police-courts, so that when a magistrate found 
liimself in a difiiculty with a female prisoner — too helpless 
to be cast back upon the world, not bad enough to be sent 
to prison — Miss Weaver would step in and, with a modest 
deference’ to the bench, suggest that she thought the case 
was peculiarly one for “ The Retreat.” Or, in the event of 
an interesting young woman coming to grief through the 
misconduct of some perfidious man, or when the Society 
for the Protection of Woman had stepped between some 
foreign girl and a designing procuress, Miss Weaver con- 
tinually came to the front to relieve Justice from a quandary, 
and to exercise the practical benevolence of her well-known 
institution, to w^hich she had sacrificed fortune, health, 
almost reputation. 

It was Miss Weaver’s mission in life to help her unfor- 
tunate sisters. When her widowed mother turned her adrift, 
at the age of seventeen, to seek a precarious living as a 
ladies’ maid, she conceived the idea of devoting her life and 
fortune, one pound and five shillings, to the salvation of de- 
luded girls and unfortunate women. She commenced as a 
distributer of tracts ; and she rose step by step until she be- 
came secretary to a society for advancing the interests of 
domestic servants out of employment. A clergyman, who 
was evidently actuated by spitefulness and jealousy, pro- 
fessed to be dissatisfied with the way in which Miss Weavei 
kept her accounts. Indeed, he was so malicious that, as 


CRUEL LONDOI^. 


179 


the chairman of the society, he called upon her to resign, 
under a cruel threat of charging her with theft. Anxious 
to avoid scandal, and unwilling to injure a most wicked 
parson, because he had a wiffe and a large family, she 
resigned, even enduring the suspicions of the committee. 
Their minds had been poisoned by the chairman, who, 
though he deserved her anatliemas, she declared her inten- 
tion to pray for, every day. 

There is no knowing how much a truly charitable heart 
will bear for the welfare of persons with whom it has not 
the slightest sympathy, of whom it has indeed no knowl- 
edge, when the guiding spirit is one of truly. Christian 
benevolence. Miss Weaver, after her great act of self-sacri- 
fice in connection with the Domestic Servants’ Aid Society, 
found herself the possessor of one hundred and fifty pounds. 
With a liberality that even touched the heart of the Bishop 
of Took’s Court, she opened an establishment for the pur- 
pose of supplying poor women, mothers of families, nurses, 
and respectable domestic servants, with winter clothing and 
bedding at cost price. The institution was managed by a 
committee, which included several gentlemen well known 
for their philanthropical proclivities. Major Wenn was 
the secretary and treasurer ; Miss Weaver, the manageress. 
The committee sat once a quarter to receive the report, and 
to pass resolutions favorable to Miss Weaver and Major 
Wenn ; eventually the society got into financial difficulties, 
the bishop retired from the committee, and certain cred- 
itors, finding that everything had been bought and sold in 
Miss Weaver’s name, insisted upon making the lady bank- 
rupt. Such is the cold, unappreciative conduct of creditors 
who are not philanthropists! The Court found that the 
books of accounts were badly kept, and that considerable 
sums of money were unaccounted for. Miss Weaver, how- 
ever, appeared before the Commissioner herself, and made 
a statement which put a different complexion upon the case 
from that which at first it seemed to bear. A crowd of 
poor women, whom she had helped in sore need, appeared, 
several of them in tears, and Miss Weaver received protec- 
tion and a certificate with sympathetic promptitude. Her 
unscrupulous enemies shook their heads, nevertheless, and 
said she was a clever woman, and that she must have made 
a clear two thousand pounds by the transaction. 

Happily, Miss Weaver had a champion. Major Wenn 
wrote to the daily papers in reply to an impertinent criticism 


180 


CRUEL LONDON 


which had appeared, touching Miss Weaver’s benevolent 
schemes. He told her history in glowing terms, and prom- 
ised the public, for Miss Weaver, a new institution, which 
would have the support of her former committee, who were 
prepared to pledge themselves for her honesty and single- 
ness of purpose. Then the selfish opponents of Miss Weaver 
hid their heads; and by and by there appeared in the Mary- 
lebone Road “Miss Weaver’s Retreat,” an asylum for 
women and children in adversity. There were two classes 
of inmates, each class carefully separated from the other, 
each class under separate and distinct management. One 
side for respectable women, homeless and friendless ; the 
other for fallen sisters and interesting police-court heroines. 

“ The Retreat,” soon became famous for its excellent 
management. It was visited by clergymen, praised by 
magistrates, and described in glowing colors by a smart, 
descriptive writer, who sketched “ London Life and London 
Shadows,” for a popular daily paper. But Satan is a busy 
enemy. lie put it in the minds of cynics and unbelievers 
to go about and say that Miss Weaver made a profit out of 
“ The Retreat.” “ And even if she did,” said her friends, 
though they denied it, “ even if she did, surely the laborer 
was worthy of his hire ; and if the subscribers who kept 
‘ The Retreat,’ going had to pay a matron to manage it, 
they could never get so single-minded, so generous, and so 
capable a woman at the head of affairs as Miss Weaver.” 
Major Wenn told visitors who came to “ The Retreat” from 
all parts of London, told them in confidence, that the fact 
was. Miss Weaver was the illegitimate daughter of an earl ; 
that she felt her position so keenly she never meant to 
marry ; and that she had, in consequence, dedicated her life 
to the work of charity. The earl allowed her a thousand 
pounds a quarter, and this was how she spent it. When a 
clever writer of gossip in a society paper got hold of this, 
and made a romantic paragraph about it, Miss* Weaver’s 
enemies were dumbfounded. They were silent for a long 
time, and Miss Weaver was followed by a crowd whenever 
she made an angelic descent upon a police-court, and res- 
cued a victim from a cruel cell or, what was still more 
bitter, a cruel and heartless world. 

Miss Weaver ]nit her new charges into a brougham and 
drove them to “ The Retreat.” Major Wenn, like a kind, 
unpretentious gentleman, rode with the driver on the box. 
Mrs. Gardner took a violent dislike to the major ai b« 


CRUEL LONDON. 


181 


handed her into the brougham. In spite of the depression 
that possessed her, there was enough active life in her to 
shrink at the touch of Major Wenn. Miss Weaver, how- 
ever, exercised a pleasant influence over her. The founder 
of “ The Retreat,” was a fascinating woman of thirty-five. 
Tall, graceful, dashing (but for a certain disrnified reserve 
of manner which was quite in keeping with Major Wenn’s 
account of her origin), she had an air of authority, a some- 
what distinguished style. She was dark, though her com- 
plexion was inclined to be ruddy. Black, bead-like eyes, a 
square, strong forehead, rather prominent cheek-bones, an 
expansive mouth, strong jaw and chin. Her nose was a 
trifle weak as to character, but the general effect of the face 
was handsome : and when it laughed tliere was sly fun in 
it. If you had examined it closely you would have noted a 
want of repose, a twitching of the mouth, a restlessness of 
the eyes, a sort of active desire to keep you occupied, and 
not give you time to think. She dressed well, usually in 
black silk, and wore one ring, a' diamond set in an ancient 
fashiop, an heirloom which the earl had recently sent her, 
with a letter, in which he begged her to come to the castle 
and he would acknowledge her as his child, and give her the 
position which her merits might command. But the pure, 
high-minded woman could not be turned from her purpose ; 
for she had all her father’s obstinacy, combined with her 
poor dead mother’s self-sacrificing nature. 

The major was a retired officer of theTndian army, said 
to be a gentleman of means ; though thei-e were evil reports 
even about his financial position. “ Be thou as pure as ice, 
as chaste as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny.” Here 
was a man who had held Her Majesty’s commission in the 
British army ; here was a man who had fought and bled for 
his country ; who on the downhill of life devoted himself 
to the beautiful and holy cause of charity; and there were 
calumniators base enough in London to attribute interested 
motives to him. One of Miss Weaver’s rivals in charity- 
mongering had actually stated that the major lived at “The 
Retreat ” half his time, and that the retationship between 
him and Miss Weaver was not creditable to tlie institution. 
But Major Wenn was not long in bringing that libeller to 
her senses (shade of charity, the scandalizer was a woman 1) 
by a threatened action for libel. She apologized and paid 
£10 to “The Retreat fund,” which was duly advertised. 

Surely there must have been something very wicked in 


182 


CRUEL LONDON. 


the nature of Mrs. Gardner, as Miss Weaver observed a 
few days after the woman’s admission to “ The Retreat,” 
for she had actually complained of the treatment she had 
received from Major Wenn. No well-organized mind could 
fail to be favorably impressed with the appearance of Major 
Wenn. He was no ordinary martinet. There was nothing 
starchy in his style. You would hardly have suspected 
him to have been a son of Mars. A smiling, talkative, ner- 
vous, demonstrative man, he was the life and soul of the 
committee meetings at “ The Retreat.” He had pale eyes, 
pale eyebrows, a puffy face, with a nose a little out of the 
perpendicular, a pale, lank moustache, a pale imperial, 
which he pulled with a white bejewelled hand, and a bald 
head, over which he scrupulously brushed long wisps of 
hair. He usually wore trousers of the tartan plaid, and a 
dark frock coat buttoned over his chest.. He spoke in a 
husky voice, and chuckled in a husky voice at his own small 
jokes. Here was a man to respect ! Did he not carry hon- 
esty in his face ? Oh, base, unnatural spirit of calumny, 
to settle down upon the amiable and guileless Major Wenn, 
the champion of the lovely victim of a cruel world ! — a 
woman who, recognizing an unhappy fate in the bar-sinister 
that blurred her escutcheon, said, “ No ! I will never mar- 
ry ; I will offer ujj my maiden life upon the altar of Char- 
ity ! ” . 

It was, at first blush, a pleasant change from Porter’s 
Buildings to “ The Retreat.” Miss Weaver herself con- 
ducted Mrs. Gardner to a clean little bedroom in an upper 
story of the tall house, which had, from a warehouse, been 
converted into a retreat for the weary and unfortunate. It 
was a small room at the end of a long passage, w^hich 
seemed to be an avenue of bedrooms. After she had shown 
her this sleeping-chamber. Miss Weaver took her down to 
her own sitting-room — a cheerful apartment, overlooking a 
few flower-beds, shut out from the road by a high wall. 
Baby was asleep, and Miss Weaver persuaded Caroline to 
lay it upon a comfortable, chintz-covered sofa, where Miss 
Weaver covered it over with an antimacassar, the weather 
still being very hot. Caroline looked peculiarly interesting. 
There was in her eyes a tired, pathetic expression that 
seemed rather to heighten than otherwise the girlish beauty 
of her face and figure. She looked more like an Italian 
girl than an American, and Miss Weaver did not require 
to be told that her new patient was no ordinary w'oman. 


CRUEL LONDON, 


183 


Miss Weaver had laid aside her thin silk paletot, and she 
was now in a plain black silk dress, with her hair brushed 
low over her forehead. She had excessively white teeth, 
and her smile was intended to be ingenuous and bland. 
Caroline began to like her at once; Miss Weaver was de- 
termined that she should. When Miss Weaver made up 
her mind to captivate a person, from a bishop down to a 
policeman, from a shrewd woman of the world down to a 
waif of the streets, she usually prevailed. 

“ What part of America did you come from, dear?” 
asked Miss Weaver, sitting before Caroline, with her back 
to the light. 

The South,” said the new patient, in a gentle and sub- 
dued voice, a contrast to the strong but not unmusical 
tones of Miss Weaver. 

“ What part of the Sout£, dear?” asked Miss Weaver 
kindly but peremptorily. 

“ I would rather not say.” 

“Why, dear?” 

“ I don’t wish any one w’ho knew my father to know the 
condition I am in.” 

“ Your secret is safe with me, whatever it is, but I do 
not wish you to tell me anything you would rather not 
speak about. Of course you are married ? ” 

The last question was put insinuatingly, as much as to 
say Miss Weaver would neither be shocked nor surprised 
if she w'ere not. 

“Yes; and it is to satisfy myself about my marriage 
that brought me to London.” 

“ That’s odd ; how do you mean ? If you know you 
are married, I don’t see how you desire to be satisfied about 
it. Don’t tell me, if you would rather not, but do if you 
think I can help you.” 

“ I think you can.” 

“ Then don’t hesitate : I have great power in London, 
and I have the inclination to help you.” 

“When m/ husband left me he took away the certifi- 
cate of my marriage.” 

“ You want a copy from the vestry-book? ” 

“ I want to be sure that I am legally married.” 

“ Where were you married ? ” 

I don’t know.” 

“Don’t know?” 


1.84 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“ I am a miserable woman,” said Caroline, the tears 
welling up into her black eyes. J 

Miss Weaver sat down, moved her chair nearer to her, 
and took her hand. 

“Trust me,” she said ; “tell me all — it will relieve your 
mind.” 

“ When we came to England, I and my father,” said 
Caroline, “my father, at a depot on the track, got out to 
have some refreshment. In our country we step upon the 
cars while they are moving ; my father tried to do so, and 
was killed. The cars stopped ; I thought it was for him to 
get in, but it was to pick up his dead body.” 

Mrs. Gardner paused here, and Miss Weaver put her 
arm round her shoulders. 

“He was crushed almost, out of recognition. A young 
Englishman had travelled with us from Liverpool, and my 
father and myself had found him very agreeable. He had 
already changed cards with my father, though my father 
was reticent, and had determined not to make friends in 
England ; but he seemed to take a great fancy to Mr. 
Plnlip Gardner ; so I felt he was a friend when my trouble 
came, as if I had known him for years. It w^as a dreadful 
shock to me, my poor father — a dreadful shock I ” 

“ There, there, don’t distress yourself,” said Miss 
Weaver kissing the girl on the forehead. 

“No ; you are very kind, and I have not been used to 
much kindness lately.” 

“It was a very sad accident indeed.” said Miss Weaver. 

“ I think I became insensible under the shock.’’’ 

“No wonder, no w^onder, poor child.” 

“ It only seemed a few hours, but when I got better they 
had buried him, the poor dear — they had buried him; and 
Mr. Gardner took me away from the hotel. I had no other 
friend in the world except one, and my father would not 
liave him as a friend, or let me think ot him. He had 
fought against us in the. war. Mr. Gardner was a bach- 
cdor, and has an estate in Westernshire, and he took me 
there. He proposed to marry me. He had been so good 
I could not find it in my heart to refuse him.” 

“ Did you love any one else ? ” 

“ No, not quite.” 

“ You liked some one?” 

“ Yes, a Northerner, the young man whom my father 
ordered never to speak to me. We met him in New York, 


CRUEL LONDON. 


185 


and I only saw him a few times during the course of the 
several weeks we stayed there.” 

“ Well, dear, go on. I won’t ask his name ; you might 
think me inquisitive. Go on, love, go on.” 

“ He explained to me the marriage ceremonies and 
customs of England, and said he would prefer the civil 
contract of registration. We went to an office and entered 
our names, and we were married ; he didn’t care to make a 
fuss, and he would rather his relations knew nothing about 
it. We went to London, got married, and returned the 
same day. Latterly my husband was not kind to me ; he 
left me, and the house and everything was seized by the 
law, and when he went he wrote me a cruel letter, in which 
he said I was not his wife. I was free, and he wished me 
to go back to America.” 

“ Yes? ” said Miss Weaver, a little less affectionately, 
now that the story Avas nearly at an end. 

“ He took Avith him the registrar’s paper, and every 
record about my father’s death — where it took place, and 
all letters, and everything ; and I Avant to find the office 
Avhere Ave Avere married, and have a copy of the entry made 
out for me ; not for my OAvn sake, but for Ids — for Willie’s.” 

She looked at the sleeping child as she spoke, and leaned 
her head upon Miss Weaver’s shoulder. The lady of “The 
Retreat” rose and moved her chair to its former position. 

“ That’s easy enough. Where Avas it ? ” 

“ I don’t know.” 

“ W^hat Avas it like ?” 

“ An office on a hilly street, with a ch.apel at the top, 
and a broad avenue running below.” 

“ We will drive out to-morrow and find it. Major Wenn 
AAiill help us : he is very clever. I think the place is near 
St. Paul’s, down a court there, Avhere odd persons, dressed 
like piemen, Avith Avhite aprons, touch their hats, and ask - 
Avhat you require ; Ave Avill find it, and tlien you shall tell 
me all about this Mr. Gardner, and we Avili see if we can’t 
put things straight for you.” 

“ Don’t tell Major Wenn, please.” 

“ Nonsense, my dear, he is the cleA’.erest and best person 
in the AA'orld. What 1 should do Avithout him in this great 
institution I really do not know.” 

“ I would rather you didn’t tell the major,” said Caro- 
line, sitting erect, and surprising Miss Weaver Avith a 
sudden look of firmness and decision, so. different to her 


186 


CRUEL LONDON. 


gentle, yielding, submissive manner of a few minutes pre- 
viously. 

“ Very well,” said Miss Weaver, ringing an electric bell, 
which was answered on the instant by a hard-faced woman 
in a cotton dress. 

“ Send Nurse Belper to me.” 

The woman left without a word. 

Presently, another hard-faced woman entered. 

“ Belper, carry that child in your arms, and show this 
lady to her bedroom. No. 40, on the upper story, and see 
that she has everything she requires.” 

“ Yes, ma’am.” 

“ I will carry the child, thank you,” said Mrs. Gardner, 
rising. 

“ You are not strong enough to carry it up all those 
stairs. Belper will take it. 

Caroline did not falter under the glance of authority 
and command which Miss Weaver turned upon her, but 
went and took up the child. 

Belper looked aghast. 

“ My dear,” said Miss Weaver, “ I expect my servants 
to take their orders from me, and obey them. Give the 
child to Belper. 

“ No,” said Caroline, pressing her child closer to her 
breast ; “ I wdll carry Willie, thank you.” 

Miss Weaver bit her lips; her eyes flashed angrily. 
She laid her hand upon Caroline’s shoulder. It was a 
liard, strong hand. 

“ Give that child to the nurse. I am bound to maintain 
discipline in this establishment. Take it, Belper.” 

In an instant Caroline rushed to the door, and was out 
in the passage, followed quickly by Belper and Miss Weaver. 
The stubborn young woman was met by Major Wenn, who 
was on his way to Miss Weaver’s little room. 

“ Hoity, toity ! ” he said in his husky though jaunty 
fashion, while barring the way against the woman and 
child ; “ what’s all this about ? ” 

Willie began to cry vociferously. 

Miss Weaver seized- the mother by her shoulders and 
literally ran her back into the room. Major Wenn and 
Belper followed. Miss Weaver shut the door, and briefly 
explained what had taken place. 

“Outofpui'e kindness, major, I requested Belper to 


CRUEL LONDON. 187 

carry the child for her, and she has turned upon us both 
like a tigress/’ 

Caroline trembled with fear. 

“Now I call you to witness, major,” (the child sobbed 
and hid its face in its mother’s neck), “ that I only desire 
her to allow Belper to carry the child upstairs for her. If 
it were not for the absolute necessity of maintaining disci- 
pline in ‘ The Retreat,’ I would give way ; but Belper 
herself knows I dare not, and I will have her carry that 
child ! ” 

“What is your objection, young woman?” said the 
major, going up to her familiarly, and taking her by the 
arm. 

Caroline slunk away, and immediately placed Willie in 
Belper’s arms. 

“Number 40,” said Miss Weaver. Belper went out. 
Mrs. Gardner followed her without another word. 


CHAPTER IV. 

A DECLAKATION OP WAB. 

The sentiment of sympathy is not more quickly excited 
in the female mind than the feeling of aversion. 

Mrs. Gardner had not intended to challenge the power 
of Miss Weaver ; but that lady had chosen to see nothing 
in her conduct but a desire to question her authority, or 
determination to defy it. 

Mis Weaver’s instinct had discovered in this delicate > 
looking, pretty, slight woman a strength of will which 
seemed to challenge her own. There was an expression of 
determination in the black eyes which did not accord with 
ihQ petite figure, the bending, shy manner. 

It was as if the good woman and the bad recognized 
each other ; as if the spirit of Virtue said to Vice, “ I know 
you, — you are a wolf in sheep’s clothing ; ” and as if Vice 
said, “Then you shall feel my teeth if you are wilful enough 
to discover them to any one else.” Miss Weaver did not 
feel comfortable in the presence of the pure, searching 
eves. She affected a calmness she did not feel. She wished 


188 


CRUEL LONDON. 


she had never touched the woman. It seemed as if her 
presence in “ The Retreat ” was of bad augury. When their 
eyes met in angry controversy, Miss Weaver felt that a 
great battle had begun that might fill the whole place, per- 
haps resound throughout the great city itself. 

Two opposite natures had met. They were fire and 
water. Miss Weaver felt as if it was necessary at once 
that one should control the other. 

Strange that the little, friendless Southerner should 
make such a deep and serious impression upon the hand- 
some, clever, powerful, and successful Miss Weaver. 

It is almost beyond imagination to think that this 
proud, haughty “ daughter of an earl,” driving through 
London in purple and fine linen, should condescend to con- 
sider for a moment that poor little woman who had been 
hooted out of Porter’s Buildings to acknowledge her home- 
lessness in a Police Court. But Miss Weaver was always 
on the watch ; her eyes were always busy ; her mind was 
always at work. She saw and noted every straw on the 
stream, which way it went, where it paused ; and some- 
thing warned her that her new capture for “ The Retreat ” 
would give her trouble. 

The brave adventurers of old who sailed out into un- 
known seas, and who penetrated into unknown lands, 
were not more wary than are the wicked adventurers of 
London. 

The men and women who live by their wits undertake 
risks hardly less hazardous in their way than the adventurer 
of the romantic days who committed himself to fortune, 
and sought for wealth and fame in unknown worlds. 

Mr. Jeremiah Sleaford, Mr. Philip Gardner, Mr. Fitz- 
herbert Robinson, Mr. Maclosky Jones, Miss Weaver— they 
had, so to speak, constantly to have their hands upon their 
weapons, ever ready for defence, always prepared for ag- 
gression. Any day, an error of judgment, a slip of the 
tongue, a daring enemy, might pull them down. They had 
to count chances of success and failure as carefully as any 
true and noble adventurer who went forth with flags and 
banners, with drums and trumpets. That their cause was 
bad enforced a more careful look-out and more discreet 
observance of omens and warnings. 

Miss Weaver was no careless operator, such as Jeremiah 
Sleaford. She was not vulgar in her vices, like Migswood, 
nor was she a mere picker and stealer of the “ Irish Moll ” 


CRUEL LONDON. 


189 


type. On the contrary, she was a feminine Fernando Men- 
dez Pinto — a Tartuffe in petticoats, a siren among men, a 
saint among woman. She made swindling a fine art ; 
trading in charity an engrossing profession. If she had 
chosen to operate from a society point of view, she would 
have been a princess of fashion ; she preferred the severe 
standpoint of philanthropy, and the role of a vestal virgin 
— so pure, so good, that Satan could not touch her. A 
mystery to women, a delightful example of bold charity to 
men, the lords of creation found a charm in her innocent 
daring, her philosophic courage, her utter absence of mock- 
modesty ; and she had a foot and ankle that were perfectly 
charming. A lady of charity, she had bishops in her train ; 
a woman of means, she commanded the sceptical. An ad- 
venturess of the. highest ability, she had spies in her pay ; 
a philanthropist whose deeds were before the world, she led 
benevolent disciples in silken chains, and in her “ Retreat” 
the lowly, the humble, the persecuted, the forlorn of her 
unhappy sex, found a heaven of happiness and rest. 

Nevertheless, Miss Weaver was afraid of the most for- 
lorn, most friendless, most miserable of her unknown pen- 
sioners. Such is the influence of truth ; such is the instinc- 
tive antipathy of the supremely wicked for the supremely 
good. A devil in the presence of an angel might be sup- 
posed to have similar sensations to those which afliicted 
Miss Weaver under the personal influence of Caroline Vir- 
ginia Gardner. 

“A perfect vixen,” said Miss Weaver, when she and 
the major were alone; “ a wilful, suspicious, haughty vixen. 

“ Do you really think so? said the major. “What a 
contrast to my adorable Isy ! ” 

He caught Miss Weaver in his arms and kissed her. 

“Don’t be foolish, Wenn ; I’m not in the humor for 
kissing. I could have smacked her.” 

“ She’s deuced pretty, though.” 

“Yes, I could see you were admiring her at the 
Police Court, and she has found you out already.” 

“ How ? ” 

“ Didn’t you see her shudder at you when you put her 
into the brougham? Didn’t you see her start back just 
now when you went near her? ” 

“ No, really, poor little trifler, she is a bad judge of char- 
acter ; well, and what is she ? Who is she ? What’s to 
be done with her ? ” 


190 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“ She’s to be tamed,” said Miss Weaver. “ I’ll lot her 
see who is the mistress here.” 

“Is it worth while? ” asked the major. 

“Yes; I shall like the work,” was the quick reply. 
“ She has got up a romantic story about her father and her 
marriage. I believe she is an artful, designing creature. 
You should have seen her defy me ! ‘ Take the child, Bel- 

per,’ I said ; ‘ I will take the child,’ she said. ‘ I am 

usually obeyed here,’ I said ; ‘take the child, Belper.’ The 
next moment the little vixen flew to the sofa, took the child, 
and glared at me.” 

“ She has a daring spirit, to defy you,” said the major. 
“What a pair of eyes she has! They go through you. 
She’s something like that girl whom Colonel Freebottle 
took into keeping from here.” 

“ Don’t make me jealous of her, as well as mad with 
her. Major Wenn, or I’ll be inclined to strangle the hussy.” 

“ Come in,” said the major, in answer to a knock at the 
door. 

The hard-faced woman entered, and presented, upon a 
silver tray, a card to Miss Weaver. 

“Mr. Fitzherbert Robinson,” she said. 

“ What’s he like, Curtis ?” 

“ A gentleman,” said the hard-faced Curtis. 

“ Show him in.” 

The major left the room as Mr. Robinson entered. 


CHAPTER V. 

THE FIGHT BEGINS. 

“Miss Weaver, I presume?” said Mr. Fitzherbert 
Robinson, holding his hat and cane in his left hand, bowing 
deferentially, and posing with a languid, society air. 

The lady bowed and waited. 

“ T observe that, with your well-known charitable in- 
stincts, you received into your ‘Retreat’ a young girl and 
her infant yesterday.” 

“ Yes?” observed Miss Weaver, interrogatively. 

“ She called herself Mrs. Gardner? ” 


CRUEL LONDON. 


191 


“Yes. Is she not Mrs. Gardner? Will yon take a seat, 
Mr. (looking at his card) Fitzherbert Robinson? ” 

“ Tliank you.’’ 

Mr. Robinson sat down, and glancing for a moment at 
his gaitered, patent-leather boots, looked into Miss 
Weaver’s face, which had assumed a quiet, patient expres- 
sion. 

“ She is not Mrs. Gardner, then ? ” 

“ No ; the fact is, the poor girl has been deceived.” 

“ Indeed ! ” 

“ Thinks she is Mrs. Gardner.” 

“ Yes ? ” 

“ I know her history.” 

“ What is it? ” 

“ Well, the story is rather a long one.” 

“ You didn’t come here to make me acquainted with it? ” 

“ IVell, no, not exactly ; I came to see if I could be of 
any service to the girl.” 

“ lias she no friends in London ? ” 

“She had not until yesterday,” said Robinson, smiling; 
“but yesterday brought Miss Weaver to her side — Miss 
Weaver and Major Wenn — I must not forget the major — 
and I hope I miiy add my own poor self as another friend.” 

The slight expression of sarcasm which obtruded itself 
in Mr. Robinson’s manner when he referred to Major 
Wenn did not escape the ever-watchful eye of Miss 
Weaver. 

“ I am sure the major will feel proud when I report to 
him, at our next committee meeting, the high estimation in 
which (looking again at his card) Mr. Fitzherbert Robinson 
holds him.” 

Mr. Robinson rose,’ smiled, bowed and re-seated him- 
self. 

“ And now, Mr. Robinson, as you are evidently a man 
of the world, and as you are certainly speaking to a woman 
of the world, perhaps you will explain your business.” 

“ You have described me to the letter. If you do your- 
self justice, I may speak to you as plainly as I might talk 
to a man, under similar circumstances — to Major Wenn for 
exam])le ? ” 

“Just so; a woman who holds a medical diploma, who 
has ridden to hounds, who has been a prison visitor, and 
who undertakes the care, if not the reformation, of unfor- 
tunate woman and criminals, is not likely to be shocked 


192 


CRUEL LONDON. 


with anything a man of the world and a gentleman may 
have to communicate to her upon any subject.” 

Miss Weaver looked boldly at her visitor, and there was 
an invitation in her eye to talk and fear not. 

“You place me at my ease. I will return candor for 
frankness. I am a bachelor. I have lived in the liouse 
where your new patient, client, or pensioner, whatever you 
may call her, lias lived. I know her well. She is a single 
woman. I don’t like the idea of her remaining here ; I 
would like to induce her to accept my friendly protec- 
tion.” 

“ Yes,” said Miss Weaver, unabashed ; “ do you know 
Major Wenn ? ” 

“ Slightly.” 

“ I should prefer your speaking to him upon the subject. 
As secretary and treasurer, he has his own peculiar views 
upon cases of this kind ; and he looks for a douceur, I be- 
lieve, to the fund which has so many heavy calls upon it. 
lie has little or no compunction how he strengthens my 
hands and the power of the committee financially. The 
philosophy that the end justifies the means is his religion, 
and ‘ The Retreat ’ has been a holy boon to hundreds of 
poor lost creatures who have been restored to honorable 
and virtuous paths by our course of kindly discipline.” 

“May I see Mrs. Gardner before I speak to tbe major 
upon the subject ? ” 

“ Certainly ; I will send for her.” 

“ I would like to see her alone.” 

“ By all means.” 

Miss Weaver touched the bell : it was answered on the 
instant. 

“ Show this gentleman to the waiting-room in Corridor 
5 ; ” and inform No. 40 that a visitor has called to see her.” 

The attendant conducted Mr. Fitzh^rbert Robinson to 
Corridor 5; and Major Wenn returned to Miss Weaver’s 
room. 

“Well,” said the major, in his small, affected voice, 
“ what did Mr. Pompous, with his gloves and cane want? ” 

“ He came about Mrs. Gardner.” 

“ I thought so. Deuced pretty girl ; no doubt about it.” 

“ He wants to see you.” 

“ I guessed it. Now I come to think, I know the fellow ; 
he is a city adventurer, belongs to a good family, writes for 


CRUEL LONDON. 


193 


financial papers, has lots of money sometimes, and some- 
times he has none ; clever dog — we must he careful.” 

“ You must be careful, you mean, Wenn — you, not us.” 

“ Yes, love, I must. Oh, you are a clever darling, Isy ! — 
a regular Pompadour.” 

“ I wish I were, with you for my king.” 

“ Ah, what a pair we should be ! But really, Isy, my 
own Isabella with the gingham umbrella, you are, don’t you 
know, the cleverest woman in the world.” 

“ But not so deuced pretty as that minx in Ho. 40,” said 
Miss \Yeaver, with a smile intended to be fascinating. 

“Pretty ! ” lisped the major, tripping to her side and 
kissing her hand, “ that is no word for your style of beauty ; 
you are simply grand, Isy, you are a queen, a Pompadour.” 

“ What is that noise ? ” Miss Weaver asked, quickly. 

“ I don’t hear anything,” said the major. 

“Yes, a scream; and somebody is coming.” 

Tlie major opened the door and went out, followed by 
Miss Weaver. They were just in time to obstruct a woman 
with a child in her arms. In another minute Mrs. Gardner 
and little Willie would have been in the street. 

“ Oh, don’t stop me ! ” gasped the woman, as if she were 
being hunted by some wild animal ; “ don’t, pray, stop me ! 
Have mercy ; have mercy ! ” 

“ Wliat is the matter?” exclaimed Miss Weaver, taking 
the woman firmly by the arm. 

“ Tliat man! Oh, that cruel man! ” 

“ What the gentleman who called to see you ? — your 
friend ? ” asked Miss Weaver, in a tone of great surprise, for 
an attendant and subscriber to “ The Retreat ” had appeared 
upon the scene. 

“ble is not my friend ; he is not a gentleman ! Oh, let 
me go ; let me go ! ” 

“I fear the poor girl’s trouble has turned her head,” said 
Mr. Fitzherbert Robinson, coming up ; “ she has been very 
badly used. I don’t wonder at her mind being influenced 
by it. ” 

Miss Weaver put her arm round her as if to protect her. 

“ Don’t tremble, dear, don’t be afraid ; they are all 
friends here,” said the angelic lady of “ The Retreat,” whom 
the venerable subscriber admired. 

“ You see, Lord Folly well, it is not all sunshine, even 
here,” she said. “ Will you kindly step into my room, and 


194 


CRUEL LONDON. 


you, Mr. Robinson ; the major will accompany you, and I 
will join you presently.’’ 

h^r Miss Weaver to ask was to command. The men 
disappeared. 

“ And now,” said Miss Weaver, taking Mrs. Gardner by 
the shoulders and hurrying her back along the passage lead- 
ing to the upper corridors, “ what do you mean by disturb- 
ing a respectable establishment in this way ? ” 

Mrs. Gardner did not speak. She hugged her child, and 
cowered beneath the iron grip of Miss Weaver. 

“ What do you mean by itj” 

“ liTou are hurting my shoulder.” 

“ I will hurt you a great deal more if you play pranks 
here. You think you can beat me, do you? It is a fight 
between you and me, is it? You think you can defy me, 
do you? We shall see. 

Along passages, up stairs, through corridors, and at last 
to No. 40. 

“ Now, Mrs. Gardner,” said Miss Weaver, with an offen- 
sive emphasis on “Mrs.,” “ you will be good enough to stay 
thereuntil I come back, and then you shall explain your 
conduct; yes, and atone for it, too, madam. I’ll show you 
who is the boss here, as your vulgar countrymen say ; I’ll 
show you.” 

She pushed woman and child headlong into the room, 
took a master key from her pocket, and locked the door. 


CHAPTER VI. 

WOMAN AGAINST WOMAN. 

Henceforth, Mrs. Gardner had a hard life at “ The Re- 
treat.” The lady of charity subjected her to a course of 
persecution. She hated her. The major would have let 
“ the woman and her brat go about their business. Not 
so Miss Weaver. Vice had Virtue by the throat; Truth 
was at the feet of Falsehood. Miss Weaver took a delight 
in torturing her victim. She had her removed into the 
centre of corridor No. 5, so that she could have no commu- 
nication with the outer world. The room she had first oc- 


CRUEL LONDON. 196 

cupied looked upon the street. N'o. 35, where she now 
lodged, had no outlook : it was lighted from above. 

“ I think they mean to kill us, Willie,” said Mrs. Gard- 
ner to her infant, after a week’s entire exclusion from the 
outer world. “It is very lonely here ; I only hope mamma 
will not lose her senses. I don’t know how long it is since 
we came here love. Poor Willie ! ” 

The little one looked pale. Miss Weaver had urged 
Mrs. Gardner to let the child be taken out, but the woman 
had resolutely resisted all attempts to separate her from 
the child. 

“ Why are you so unkind to me ? ” she asked, pitifully. 

“ Unkind ! ” exclaimed Miss Weaver. “You are a de- 
signing, wicked, vicious woman ! You thought to usurp my 
authority, did you? You didn’t know the woman you had 
to deal with. You are not the first vixen I have tamed, by 
many ! ” 

“ I have only this poor little thing to love and be loved 
by in the world,” said No. 35. “ My only resistance to 

your authority has been to cling to my child.” 

“Stuff ! you opposed me from the first. As we left the 
Police Court you insulted Major Wenn. What had he 
done to you that you should shrink from him ?” 

“Nothing,” said the woman, humbly. 

“What have I done that you should commit an act of 
insubordination the moment you enter “ The Retreat ? ” ’ 

“ I did not wish to part from little Willie.” 

“Was little Willie in question when you scandalized 
the house, and tried to disgrace it in the presence of a dis- 
tinguished subscriber and my servants ? ” 

“ I am very sorry. That person you permitted to call 
upon me insulted me.” 

“Did he, indeed ?” exclaimed Miss Weaver, folding her 
hands upon her knees, and regarding her victim with lofty 
disdain. “ I should hardly have thought it possible to in- 
sult a woman in your position — a cast-off mistress, who is 
eventually found grovelling in the gutter of Porter’s Build- 
ings.” 

“ I did not know where I was,” said No. 35, the tears 
in her eyes, for she was weak, the spirit of resistance hav- 
ing been lowered by a mild diet and confinement. 

“Didn’t you? ’’said Miss Weaver. “I doubt it very 
much, unless you are a lunatic, and I am sometimes inclined 
to think that is your complaint. Mr. Fitzherbert Robinson 


196 


CRUEL LONDOU. 


.'.ssures me that he said nothing to you unbecoming a gentle- 
man.” 

“ I expect I am strange to you and to the people here. 
I am a foreigner, you see, and you should pity me and let 
me go.” 

“ Pity you and let you go, so that you may circulate all 
kinds of reports against “ The Retreat! ” I know you, my 
dear ; I know the sort of viper I have nursed. I tell you 
again, you don’t leave here except-with your so-called hus- 
band or his friend, Mr. Pitzherbert Robinson, the only per- 
sons who appear to know anything of you in England.” 

“ Then I shall die here ! ” said No. 35, with a gentle firm- 
ness, and looking at her persecutor with that defiant ex- 
pression which irritated Miss Weaver, and stimulated her 
in her course of torture. 

“You may live or die, as you please. That is your 
own look-out. Don’t imagine that threats of suicide have 
any effect upon me : I have heard them before.” 

“ Oh, why do you delight to torture me ? Why don’t 
YOU let me go? Turn me out into the street, and I will bless 
you. I will never mention your name ; I will try to forget 
it, and all the cruelties I am suffering.” 

“I dare say! ” remarked Miss Weaver, with a contemp- 
tuous smile. “You shall go when you are tamed, and not 
till then ; no, not if the process of taming kills you.” 

Miss Weaver rose and paced the room. 

“ May I not go out for a little fresh air? ” 

“ No.” 

“ My baby will die for the want of it.” 

“ The baby can go out. The nurse shall take it for an 
airing.” 

“ Why may not I go?” 

“ You are not fit to be trusted.” 

“ Why ? ” 

“You are crazy, you are violent ; you are not fit to be 
trusted.” 

“Do you wish to drive me mad ?” 

Mrs. Gardner asked this question with a quick earnest- 
ness, as if she gave vent to a new thought that had just 
come into lier mind. 

“ I shouldn’t have to drive far,” Miss Weaver answered, 
now preparing to leave the room. 

“ What do you wish me to do ?” 

“ Whatever you like.” 


CRUEL LONDON. 


197 


“ Suppose I did all you desired, what is it ? ” 

“ Show a proper confidence in me, and not fly in the face 
of Providence. Don’t pretend to be wliat you are not ; 
and, above all things, don’t imagine you can dictate to Miss 
W eaver ! ” 

Tliis is a fair example of the interviews which Miss 
Weaver had continually with her victim, only that she had 
not, until this occasion, fairly roused a suspicion in Mrs. 
Gardner’s mind that there was a conspiracy against her to 
drive her crazy — perhaps to proclaim her mad. A new 
light dawned upon her now, and she commenced to rack 
her bewildered brain upon the subject of an escape. Little 
Willie had grown querulous of late, and she talked to him 
now more frequently when he was asleep than during his 
fretful vision of wakefulness. 

“ I have thought it out, Willie,” she whispered ; “ for 
your sake, dear, we must get out of this place, and then we 
will throw ourselves at the feet of the Queen ; she is a 
woman, and has a fond heart. We must stoop low to conquer, 
Willie ; we have been too honest, too frank. I know, 
Willie, I know. We must imitate the Indian, dear, and be 
crafty. Let us think of the Indian : craft, love, craft ! 27o, 
1 am not going mad, love; I am coming to my senses. 
Yesterday 1 thought I would leap upon her like a tigress at 
her throat, tear her down, and kill her. My head throbbed 
then — my head. My hands felt like claws. But that is 
over now. I have prayed, love, for you, and I feel better ; 
but I must be stronger, dear, before the time for action 
comes. If we could once get into the street, we could run'; 
we could cry, “ Help ! ” This is a free country ; we should 
be rescued. That is why she dare not let me go out. 
Don’t you see how fearful she is that I might speak against 
her and her prison ? That gives me courage. She wishes 
to make out I’m mad, that my accusation may not be 
listened to. She is a bad woman, cruel, bad — wicked as 
Migswood ; she keeps a prison, worse, and calls it heaven ! 
I dreamed of an Indian last night. Craft, craft; seem what 
you are not. Oh father! father! why did you die and 
leave me? ” 

On the next day when Miss Weaver came in to indulge 
in ten minutes of verbal torture, and see her victim writhe 
Mrs. Gardner received her with unusual deference. 

“ It is good of you to come and see me, though you do 
say unkind things,” she said, when Miss Weaver had locked 


198 


CRUEL LONDON. 


the door behind her, and taken a seat upon the only chair 
the room contained. 

“ Thank you.” 

“ You seemed yesterday to think that Mr. Gardner might 
call?” 

“ Did I ? I think not. If Mr. Fitzherbert Robinson has 
told him how he was received, I should hardly think it likely 
that Mr. Gardner would run the risk of calling.” 

“ Mr. Robinson has not been again, then ?” 

“Yes, he has.” 

“Oh!” 

“ I suppose you will blame me for not acquainting you 
with the fact ? ” 

“ No.” 

“ Really ? ” 

“I should have had no right to blame you.” 

“ Indeed ! What condescension, what justice ! ” 

“ I don’t like him ; but he says he was my husband’s 
friend.” 

“ You don’t like me,” said Miss Weaver, “ and I am the 
only person who has befriended you.” 

“ I fear I have been wrong.” 

“Wrong!” exclaimed Miss Weaver; “your conduct 
has been shameful.” 

“I expect I misunderstand Mr. Robinson.” 

“You misunderstand everybody.” 

“ Yes, I think I do.” 

“ I. thought you would think so eventually.” 

“ I have not been accustomed to be controlled.” 

“ Do you want to beg my pardon ? ” 

“ I do, I do,” exclaimed No. 35, flinging herself at Miss 
Weaver’s feet. 

“ Very well,” said the Lady of Charity, raising her, “ I 
will consider about it. I must have proofs of your sincerity 
given me besides this humbleness. You may kiss my hand.” 

No 35 kissed the extended hand. 

“ Well, what are you prepared to do to prove your 
sincerity ? ” 

“ I will see Mr. Robinson.” 

“ Yes, that’s a step in advance. What will you say to 
him ? Complain of your treatment by Miss Weaver?” 

“No, indeed, I will not.” 

“ Will you write me a letter? Express your regret, and 
thank me for my kindness and care.” 


CRUEL LONDON. 


199 


No. So hesitated. 

“ Supposing I gave you the sitting-room, No. 30, with a 
]nano, and treated you as I meant to have done at first, if 
you liad behaved well ? 

“ I would do all you could wish.” 

“ Very well.” 

Miss Weaver left the room. Caroline kissed her baby. 

The truth is. Miss Weaver had that day received several 
anonymous threats of exposure. She was accustomed to 
epistolary stabs in the dark, and had been courageous enough 
to place some of them in the hands of the police ; but this 
morning a placard, with the word “ Impostor,” had been 
posted on the entrance-doors, a letter of “ Inquiries concern- 
ing ‘ The Ketreat’ had appeared in a daily newspaper. 
These incidental troubles harassed her at the moment, more 
particularly because a police superintendent had called to 
inform Miss Weaver that Mrs. Gardner would have to 
appear next week at the Sessions against Irish Moll, It 
had therefore become suddenly necessary that No. 35 
should either be brought into a more friendly condition of 
mind or worried into a lunatic asylum. She had not 
communicated her views in regard to the latter contingency 
to. Major Wenn, but she had a plan full of audacious 
cruelty to compass her end should she be pushed to 
extremities. Finding No. 35 at her feet was, therefore, an 
event full of satisfaction to her. Mr. Fitzherbert Robinson 
had informed Major Wenn that, if Mrs. Gardner would 
come to Hanover Gate and keep house for him, he would 
Vake care of her, communicate with her friends, and be 
most happy to contribute a handsome sum towards the 
funds of “The Retreat.” The major had informed Mr. 
Robinson that it was quite a common thing for Miss 
Weaver to receive bank notes for hundreds and thousands 
without a line or a word, anonymous donations for the 
great cause of charity. Mr. Fitzherbert Robinson had said 
he had the greatest confidence in the major, and that he 
would do anything in the world for Mrs. Gardner. The 
major had informed Miss Weaver that Robinson was in 
luck, that he had lots of money; and Miss Weaver had 
said she had only one hope now, that Mrs. Gardner would, 
of her own free will, leave the institution under the pro- 
tection of her friend ; such an arrangement would meet 
the case, and relieve her of a difficulty. Major W enn feared 
the girl would never do that, “ so? deuced obstinate, you 


200 


CRUEL LONDON. 


know, like all pretty, dark-eyed women.” Miss Weaver 
thought she would. 

“ I was to show you into No. 30, the sittin’-room, 
inarm,” said the hard-featured Belper. 

Mrs. Gardner followed her. 

A dainty luncheon was laid. There was fruit upon the 
table, and wine. 

“Miss Weaver said you were to help yourself.” 

“ Thank you,” said Mrs Gardner. 

Willie stretched out his hands to the grapes. 

“My darling,” said the mother, “you shall have some.” 

The little one devoured the grapes and cooed. 

“We must be careful, Willie,” said the mother; “ taste 
the wine first, that’s what Indian would do.” 

She tasted the fresh, cool claret. It was pleasant to 
the palate after a course of bad tea and water. 

“ I think it is good; but we mustn’t be poisoned, 
Willie,” she whispered. “ Chicken and salad, Willie ; we 
are in favor you see. And we must eat and drink to get 
strong, love.” 

She sat down, the child upon her knee, and ate the lun- 
cheon with the relish of a hungry woman. 

There was a piano in a corner of the room ; in another, 
an easel, canvas, and paints. Mr. Robinson had told Miss 
Weaver of the girl’s accomplishments. Mrs. Gardner looked 
at these marks of delicate attention, first with delight, then 
with suspicion, then with fear. 

As she expected, Mr. Fitzherbert Robinson was pres- 
ently announced. Her heart stood still for a moment, but 
she rose to receive her visitor with apparent ease and 
calmness. 

“Miss Weaver said you would receive me. I need 
hardly say how proud I feel,” said Mr. Robinson, his hat 
and cane in his gloved right hand. “ I have only called to 
pay my respects, and to ask if there is anything I can do 
for you.” 

“ You are very kind. I think not.” said Mrs. Gardner. 

“Nor for the dear little boy?” asked Mr. Robinson, 
looking at Willie in his mother’s arms. 

“ If you could induce Miss Weaver to let me take him 
out for a little walk,” said the woman quickly ; but, correct- 
ing herself as quickly — “ no, on second thoughts, pray don’t, 
she may think I have complained, and I have no desire to 
do so.’ 


C FUEL LONDON. 


201 


Pray coninmnd me,” said Mr. Robinso 
“ Have you lieard anything more of my husband ? ” 

“ Nothing that I should care to tell the woman he has 
deceived.” 

“ I would like to know.” 

“ He has gone abroad with a lady,” said Mr. Robinson, 
uttering a suggestive falsehood. 

“ With a lady ! ” 

“ Ah, my dear madam, I only wish I could persuade you 
to think as much of me as you once thought of him. But, 
there, I must not touch on forbidden ground ; only say that 
I may call again, that is all, and I wdll trust to time to make 
us better friends.” 

“ Mr. Fitzherbert Robinson,” she said, “ I will be glad 
to see you again. I only wdsh I w^ere as free to come and 

There was an invitation to parley in the woman’s man- 
ner which caught Mr. Robinson at once. 

“ You might have all the freedom you could desire if — 
pardon my boldness — if you would extend the smallest 
amount of friendship to me.” 

“ I was very rude to you, I fear? ” 

“No.; that would be impossible. Mrs. Gardner could 
not be rude.” 

“ Yes, I was, but you have forgiven me ; this visit tells 
me that.” 

Mr. Robinson’s vanity, to say nothing about the mad 
passion this pretty, uncommon 'woman had excited in his 
selfish nature, made him an easy prey to the w'oman’s w'iles. 
“ Forgive you ! I love you ! ” 

“You must not say that,” said Mrs. Gardner, trembling 
with fear, but nerved to her bold plan of escape. “I 
cannot listen to it; not yet, at all events.” 

“You give me hope! My dear Mrs. Gardner, what 
shall I do to prove my devotion ? ” 

Mrs. Gardner was* in her turn taken off her guard. 

“ Have you a carriage ? ” 

“ \ es.” 

“ And where is it now ? ” 

“ At the door.” 

“Instruct your coachman to take me and my little 
Willie for an airing.” 

“ I will. Excuse me a moment ; I will return imme- 
diately.” 


202 


CRUEL LONDON. 


He left the room. Mrs. Gardner drank a glass of wine. 

“We must keep our courage up, Willie; even the In- 
dian needs fire-water. Oh, Willie, how my heart beats! 

She walked to the window and looked out upon a small 
forest of chimney-stacks. 

“ A city of bricks and smoke, Willie ! Is it really as 
cruel and hard as it looks ? Heaven protect us ! ” 

She gave Willie a teaspoonful of wine. He made faces 
at it, and then smacked his lips. 

Mr. Fitzherbert Robinson returned. He looked crest- 
fallen. He stammered. 

“ She won’t let you,” said Mrs. Gardner, quickly. “ I 
knew she wouldn’t. I’m a prisoner here — a ])risoner, sir. 
‘Command me,’ you said. I did. You are re-commamlcd. 
You thought you were somebody. Y’ou see ! But hark ! 
hush ! what am I saying ? Forget what I have said. I 
don’t Avant to offend Miss Weaver, nor to make you think 
)ne foolish and unkind. But, oh, it is hard to be locked up 
here ! ” 

Mr. Fitzherbert Robinson raised his finger in an attitude 
of warning. He had heard a well-known footstep. Miss 
Weaver knocked at the door, j^aused, and entered the 
room. 

“ I am very sorry, Mrs. Gardner, that you have made a 
request which is against the rules of ‘ The Retreat’. I 
would have liked to show you that my sentiments towards 
you are kindly, but discipline must be maintained. The re- 
quest, however, and the very significant way in which you 
have received your friend, induce me to say something 
which may perhaps save time, and relieve Mr. Robinson of 
his apparent embarrassment in making a proposition which 
I think redounds to his credit, and Avhich will help all of us 
under the circumstances.” 

Miss Weaver took a seat, and motipned to Mr. Robinson 
that he should do the same. 

“ May I lay little Willie upon the bed?” Mrs. Gardner 
asked, for she felt sure Miss Weaver was going to say some- 
thing which would try all her strength of dissimulation, 
and something which she would not like even her S2:>eechless 
child to hear. 

“ Certainly, yes ; anything you wish.” 

But Miss Weaver left the room with her ; and then Mrs. 
Gardner changed her mind for she had a morbid fear of 


CRUEL LONDON. 208 

letting the child be out of her sight. They might steal it; 
she thought. 

“ You are indeed a whimsical person,” said Miss Weaver, 
but ill concealing the annoyance she felt at this continued 
evidence of mistrust. “ She thinks she is fooling me,” 
thought the wily Weaver: “ we shall see.” 


CHAPTER VII. 


MR. FITZnPRBERT ROBINSON WANTS A HOUSEKEEPER. 


“ Now, Mrs. Gardner, listen,” said Miss Wearer. Mr. 
Robinson is a gentleman of means and reputation ; he wants 
a housekeeper ; he knows your husband, and seems to be 
tlie only friend you have in London ; he tells me he is will- 
ing to give you that position at a good salary, and I wish 
to ask you if it is an offer you care to entertain.” 

“ Pardon me, Mrs. Gardner,” said Robinson ; “ Miss 
Weaver is a very business-like woman ; she puts the matter 
very directly and without sentiment. Will you permit me 
to add that, in advertising the vacancy, I described tlie en- 
gagement as that of a lady housekeeper who would have a 
staff of servants, her own apartments, and every possible 
consideration of respect, and I ” 

“ Thank you,” said Mrs. Gardner ; “ I understand. 
Would you allow me, before I answer you, to have a few 
words with Miss Weaver alone?” 

“ By all means.” 

“ Then I will show I trust you by asking you to wait at 
the end of the corridor and see that nobody touches my 
child. I am going to lay him down upon the bed. Will 
you? ” 

“ You honor me,” he said. 

She saw she had conquered Robinson. 

Mrs. Gardner went straightway into No. 35, the door of 
which Miss Weaver had left open. The Lady of Charity fol- 
lowed her. She had not seen the knife the desperate 
woman had concealed — a knife which had been brought up 
with the luncheon. 


CRUEL LONDON. 


1?.04 

“ Mr Robinson, stand by that window, will you, please, 
till you see me return for Willie ? ” 

“ I will,” said Robinson, looking defiantly for the first 
time at Miss W eaver. 

“ Mad as a March hare ! ” said Miss Weaver, still look- 
ing ahead. Her plans always stretched away into the 
future. 

“ Now, madam,” said Miss Weaver, when the two 
women confronted each other alone, “ after this new 
mountebank exhibition, perhaps you will begin.’^ 

“You want me gone,” said Mrs. Gardner. 

“ Not more than you want to go.” 

“ You hate me,” said Mrs. Gardner, the wine stimula- 
ting her. She had not tasted anything stronger than tea 
for more than a week. 

“ Not more than you hate me.” 

“ I don’t hate you ; let me go freely, and I promise you 
never to breathe a word of this disgraceful intrigue.” 

“ 1 don’t understand you.” 

“ Yes, you do.” 

“ 1 lie then, do I you vixen? ” 

Miss Weaver stepped towards her panting opponent. 
The desperate woman clutched the knife. 

“ Woman !” exclaimed the American, “be careful!” 

Even the bold Weaver paused, though she only saw the 
flashing eye and the distended nostril of the southerner, in 
whose attitude there was a suggestion of the tigress. 

“ Is tljere no way for me to leave this place but with 
that man ? Answer me straight, and let us understand each 
otlier.” 

“ If you will sit down, and talk like a rational being, I 
will listen ; if not, I must leave you.” 

While she spoke sire saw the knife. Miss Weaver was 
no coward. With the rapidity of thought, and the strength 
of a man, she seized No. 35 from behind. There was in lier 
method of attack all the deftness of a woman who had been 
a nurse in a lunatic asylum. ]\Irs. Gardner wms powerless. 
The knife dropped out of her hand. She was cowed. She 
looked up at the giantess who gripped her, in fear as a child 
might have done. 

“ You theatrical hussy I Now, what have you got to 
say ? ” 

“ Nothing. Forgive me ; don’t tell Mr. Robinson \ don’t 
make a noise,” gasped the victim. 


CRUEL LONDON, 


205 


‘‘ Very well then, listen ; for I don’t intend to waste any 
more time upon you.” 

“Yes; I am listening.” 

“ You decide at once whether you leave ‘ The Retreat’ 
or stay ; you leave it at your own written and expressed re- 
quest with Mr. Fitzherbert Robinson, as his housekeeper, 
or you stay.” 

“ Suppose I stay, what will you do with me ? ” 

“ Give up the institution to you, hire servants to wait 
upon you, let you live in luxury, give you the right even to 
call Major Wenn your intimate friend.” 

Mrs. Gardner shuddered at the malicious way in which 
Miss Weaver hissed this into her ear. 

“ You didn’t think I should be so kind as that eh ? Did 
you think I’d starve you, lock you up in darkness, never 
let you see daylight, take your child from you, drive you 
crazy — so crazy that you’d have to be chained up in a cellar, 
and finally buried in a ditch ? ” 

Miss Weaver bent over the terrified woman, clutching 
her by the shoulder and glaring at her, hissing the cruel 
words into her face. 

“ Oh, don’t pray don’t ! ” exclaraed the victim. “ I’ll 
do what you wish, whatever it is.” 

The moment Miss Weaver relaxed her grip, the woman 
fell back into her chair all pale and limp. 

“ Here none of that, no fainting, rouse yourself,” said 
Miss Weaver, shaking her.” 

“ Yes, yes,” said the woman, making a mental effort, 
and staggering to her feet, “ I know. Don’t touch me ; I 
will go : give me a little wine ; I am weak.” 

Miss Weaver poured out half a tumbler of wine. The 
poor woman drank it eagerly. 

“ Thank you : tell Mr. Robinson I will go with him.” 

“ Very well; now sit down and compose yourself.” 

Mrs. Gardner sat down, 

“ You had better go to your room and lie down for half 
an hour. I will send you up a lace mantle and a few things. 
I would like you to go away comfortably. I don’t bear 
malice, though you did try to stab me with a knife.” 

“ I ! ” said the woman ; “ I try to stab you ? ” 

“ Do you deny it? Do you call me a liar again ?” 

“ Oh, no, no ! ” 

“ I don’t blame you ; it is easy to see that you are not 
quite answerable for your actions.” 


206 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“ Forgive me,” said the woman. “ I will go to baby. 
Tell him I am ready; tell him, will you?” 

She went to her room. Mr. Robinson was strictly 
guarding the portal. He bowed to her as she went in, and 
then l)e walked to the sitting-room. Miss Weaver had 
beckoned him. 

Little Willie was fast asleep. Mrs. Gardner flung her- 
self down by his side, and tried to pray. Presently she got 
up. 

“ Tie cannot hear me in this vile place,” she said ; 
“ God has left it. He will not look upon it any more than he 
would upon The Cottage. And oh, Willie, the craft of 
the Indian is no good against the devil ! She is Satan in 
the guise of a woman ! We must go, dear, if we would 
escape starvation, chains, and death. Oh, she is cruel ; there 
is torture, murder, in her cold eyes. Once outside this 
})rison, this den, we will trust to Providence. Better to 
die in the streets and be buried in a ditch, Willie, than here. 
Pray heaven I keep my senses ! I will ; for your sake I 
will.” 

She crept by his side and shut her eyes. 

“ I will try and sleep. I must not lose my strength ; I 
shall want it soon. O heaven ! give strength to my will, 
and wings to my feet.” 

“She accepts your offer,” said Miss Weaver to Mr. 
Robinson. 

“ Tlie darling ! ” exclaimed Robinson. 

“ If you please to call her darling I have no objection ; I 
thought it was housekeeper.” 

“ You are so witty and cynical.” 

“ She will be ready this evening at dusk.” 

“Delightful! I have to thank you. Miss Weaver.” 

“Not at all ; it is nothing to me. She is a lonely and 
friendless woman. I rescued her from starvation and 
infamy. You are her husband’s friend — her only friend in 
Loudon ; you offer her honorable employment, she accepts 
it.” 

“ J list so — most business-like ; thank you.” 

“ You will order your carriage to be here at eight o’clock. 
You will call for the lady and her child; in the meantime 
she will have written to me informing me of her intentions; 
you will also have sent me in writing your application in 
regard to her; then No. 35 will be vacant; and I trust 
Mrs. Gardner will, through your charitable interposition. 


CRUEL LONDON. 


207 


find her friends, and be happy ever afterwards. There ! 
Does not tliat make quite a touching and romantic story?” 

“It does, truly. You should join the staff of some 
poi)ular magazine, and write novels.” 

“ My dear Mr. Robinson, I have gone through all that. I 
have been a journalist, a hospital nurse, I have my diploma 
as a doctor, I am writing for two scientific journals at this 
moment, and I have ridden to hounds as straight as the 
liuntsman himself.” 

“ You are a wonderful woman !” 

“ I should not be here otherwise.” 

“ True.” 

“Now, a word of warning about Mrs. Gardner. As she 
enters your carriage we shall give her no chance of running 
away. See that you are equally cautious when she arrives 
at your house. Do you understand ” 

“ But do you suspect that ” 

“I suspect nothing,” replied Miss Weaver. “But this 
woman is erratic, and for some reason or another she dis- 
likes me. Her mind has been influenced against me ; if 
she could create a scandal about ‘The Retreat’ she would. 
When I give her into your care all I ask, is that you shall 
really take her home ; keep her there four-and-twenty hours, 
and then she may say or do what she pleases.” 

“I quite understand.” 

“ If she attempts to run, take hold of her arm ; clutch her 
tight. A scandal would do you no good.” 

“Good! Just now it would do me a great deal of 
harm.” 

“ Very well, then, pay attention to what I say.” 

“ All right ; I’ll take care, never fear.” 

“ Then you shall come to. the oflSce and write me that 
letter.” 

“ By all means.” 

They returned to the sanctum of the Lady of Charity. 
Major Wenn was there drawing out checks for the signa- 
ture of Miss Weaver. Mr. Robinson wrote the letter 
which Miss Weaver required, and when it had been duly 
addressed and })laced in Miss Weaver’s hand. Major Wenn 
went out with Mr. Robinson to luncheon. 

Mrs. Gardner was sitting by the window, above a forest of 
chimneys springing out of acres of roofs dingy with smoke 
and soot. She was soothing little Willie, who would burst 
into fits of crying, every tear that rolled down his cheeks 


CRUEL LONDON. 


•J08 

paining the suffering mother more than if it was a drop of 
her heart’s blood. Cruel London might have done its worst 
with her but for little Willie. She talked to him, kissed 
him, prayed that Heaven would comfort him. But she 
prayed without hope. If she had been looking upon the 
green meadows of Essam, she might have fancied she saw 
some glimpse of light in the darkness of her fortunes. But 
London seemed to stare her in the face, hard and grim and 
cruel. 

“And this,” she said “is the land which your grand- 
father described as tender and chivalrous! This is the 
country that sympathized with the South in the hour of its 
trouble I This is the land that stands by the weak and 
defies the strong! This is the land flowing with milk and 
honey ! Oh, Willie, Willie, how we have been deceived, 
betrayed to our destruction ! Let your own little heart 
pray for mamma, dear! In your baby-language, ask the 
angels that whisper to you to guide mamma this day, to 
have her in their keeping this once, dear, this once.” 

And she mingled her own tears with those of little Willie, 
who suddenly looked up at her and smiled. 

“ My darling ! ” exclaimed the mother, “ you understand 
me, sweetie, you do ; you have said something to the angels ; 
they have answered you. 

Baby cooed, and put his little arms around the mother’s 
neck. 

“Bless you, my own ! my angel! Let me kneel and 
thank your companions with wings, your playmates whom 
I cannot see.” 

She knelt with little Willie in her arms. A gleam of 
sunshine fell upon the woman, and dwelt lovingly in the 
room. She took the dancing light as another omen of good 
promise ; and, when the hour came for action, she was calm, 
self-possessed, and resolute. 


CRUEL LONDON. 


209 


CHAPTER VIII. 

THE GARRISON MAKES A SORTIE. 

iSTow it came to pass that on the day when Mrs. Gardner 
was to make a sortie from the Weaver garrison Mr. Henry 
Brayford was in search of the enemy who was the beseiged 
woman’s convoy in friendly disguise. 

It was a seige to Mrs. Gardner, this shutting up in “ The 
Retreat.” She was invested by Miss Weaver and Major 
Wenn. Her liberty was dominated by redoubts ; her move- 
ments were under constant surveillance. 

While she had agreed to march out under convoy, she 
was only meeting craft with stratagem. Her surrender, as 
a prisoner of war, to one of the beseigers was, after all, only 
a sortie for liberty, an effort at escape, a determination to 
fight when the convoy was beyond the immediate lines of 
Major Wenn and his ally. Mrs. Gardner had laid her plans. 
But she had a triple alliance against her, and the offensive 
forces were far-seeing, daring, and unscrupulous. 

If Mr. Brayford had only known how hard beset the 
poor woman was ! He lived in the neighborhood of “ The 
Retreat.” But he was not only ignorant of the case ; he did 
not even know Mrs. Gardner : he had never heard of her. 
JEIow should he have dreamed even of that hand of fate 
which was reaching over the broad waters of the Atlantic, 
to gather into a circle the lives that are bound up in this 
narrative, when he was putting his trust in Jeremiah Slea- 
ford, and waiting for the shower of gold that was to come 
out of the Pactolean clouds of the Financial Society ! Poor 
Brayford knew nothing of the mysterious hand that had 
directed those Southern fugitives, deluding one to his death, 
and delivering the other into the hands of the Philistines! 
Yet the shadow of that distant ship gliding out of New 
York harbor to battle with “the rolling forties’"^ fell upon 
our early pages. The historian was enabled to picture to 
you the gentle, trusting, but fearful girl clinging to the side 
of her gray-headed, distraught father ; to show you them, 
coming over the sea to influence the destinies of men and 
women in England of whom they had never heard ; bringing 


210 


CKUEL LONDOX. 


with them tlie silken threads of romance necessary to the 
weft of tills story of real life, to be, in their turn, woven 
into the plot which Fate had designed beforehand ; one of 
them to contribute a thread of sombre blackness, the other 
to supply skeins of varied hues, and, unsuspected in her 
gloomiest moments, to be the innocent cause of a tragic 
stain in the golden weft. 

Who shall venture upon a controversy with Fate? Who 
shall dare to challenge her stern decrees? To say that it 
might have been better for Caroline Virginia Denton, and 
her father, to have stayed in their own country is to be 
guilty of an arrogance that pretends to lift the veil of the 
future. Wlio knows what other ills might have beset their 
path; Avhat greater, bitterer trouble might have tortured 
their existence ! Moreover, it was ordained that yonder 
suffering woman, jiraying for deliverance from the snares 
and )»itfalls, the pirates, thieves, and murderers of Cruel 
London, should bear her cross in the great city. She had a 
mission. The threads of her influence are black, gray, 
golden, and red ; and as we stand upon the brink looking 
into the Future, it seems as if Fate had another minister 
standing darkly by her side, with vengeance in his eye; but 
he looms up, too shadowy yet for recognition — his face is 
strange, and his form is shrouded in a mist. 

What can a poor creature such as Bray ford have to do 
with Fate, or Fate with him? It may be that this ungainly 
comical j^erson is destined to play the part of the angel, 
for whose aid the victim of “ The Retreat” was praying. 
For it is certain that Brayford is within the shadow of the 
foi'tress, and Fate had arranged that he should be in search 
of Mr. Fitzherbert Robinson at the severest moment of 
Mrs. Gardner’s peril. 

When Mr. Jeremiah Sleaford was reviewing the past 
and discounting the future at Boulogne, his memory failed 
to carry the slightest reminiscence of Mr. Brayford. The 
fact that he and his colleagues had utterly ruined Brayford 
quite escaped his thoughts. No man could have been more 
thoroughly and completely ruined than Harry Brayford, 
the comic epitaphist and the melancholy farceur! As a 
mural mason he was wiped out. Not a single cemetery 
company would recognize him. Monolith Cottage was 
levelled to the earth. The Mausoleum and Marble Works 
at Paddington had been remodelled by the new proprietors. 
They wouldn’t even employ Brayford. They said he was 


CRUEL LONDON. 


211 


as big a tom-fool as his clerk, “the Wonner,” as Brayford 
called him. The serio-comic countryman who had amused 
the janitor at the office of the Financial Society, and who 
had delighted Mrs. Kester with his attentions at a certain 
reception, was now an out-at-elbow nobody. The Syndi- 
cate, the Cemetery Company, and Mr. Jeremiah Sleaford 
combined, had left him stranded on the inhospitable shores 
of Cruel London. 

At first Brayford had accepted the situation with a 
light heart. He sought consolation at the Footlights. But 
it was here that he first thoroughly realized his misfor- 
tunes. The Footlighters who owed him money cut him 
for fear he would ask to be repaid his loans ; those who 
had cultivated him with a lively hope of suras to be bor- 
rowed, snubbed him because their chances were at an end. 
The club generally seemed to agree that he was a fool ; tliat 
he had frittered away a fine business ; that he had peddled 
in literature out of vanity, and neglected work he under- 
stood ; that but for his money he would not have been 
tolerated ; that he had introduced a lot of men into the 
club to serve his own private ends ; that he had, in fact, 
used the club; that he had been ostentatious in his hospi- 
tality ; that properly considered, he had really no qualifi- 
cation for the club ; and that altogether he was neither en- 
titled to sympathy nor respect. There were a few mem- 
bers of the Footlights who did not hold these views. Tlie 
chairman was a notable exception ; so were the secretary 
and treasurer. But this did not compensate Brayford. 
The shock he had received overwhelmed him. He went 
to “ the boys” for comfort ; they jibed him. He asked 
them for the bread of consolation ; they gave him the 
stone of contempt. 

But a worse discovery than this of the uses of money 
was the revelation that his little farces and comic songs 
had only been accepted because he was “ a good fellow, 
you know, and it’s easy just to push a first piece in now 
and tlien — it pleases him, and he don’t want money.” 
When Brayford turned from the grave and the comic epiiaph 
to the solemn farce and the sad comic song for the means 
of a livelihood, he was laughed at- by the very men who, 
over little dinners at the Albion, or drinks at the club, had 
praised his songs and listened to his satirical three-act “In 
Memoriam.” Besides, he had neglected his dress ; he no 
longer wore gloves, his beard was unkempt, his hat was 


212 


CRUEL LONDON. 


greasy, his boots were not clean, he showed his poverty in 
the careless tie of his cravat. Brayford was literally 
“ broke,” as they would say in Lincolnshire; “stumped,” 
as they put it in London; “in the gutter,” as he said him- 
self to his old friend “theWonner,” who spent the spai-e 
pennies he could scrape together in buying newspapers and 
cutting out the “ deaths ” for circularization. “ The Won- 
ner ” thought his old chief was simply “ up to his larks,” 
that the sale of Monolith Cottage was a kind of pantomime 
joke, and Mr. Brayford’s poverty something intended to be 
just as diverting as the many other numerous eccentrici- 
ties of which he had been guilty. The only incident of 
the new phase of their lives that puzzled him was the occa- 
sional w'ant of sufficient food. This bothered “theWon- 
ner,” but not half as much as it bothered Mr. Brayford. 

On the day when Mrs. Gardner was to make her sortie 
from “ The Retreat,” Mr. Brayford had heard that Mr. 
Fitzherbert Robinson had profited largely by his downfall. 
He never liked Robinson. On the contrary, if Brayford’s 
mild nature was capable of supporting the passion of hatred, 
he hated Robinson. He had not only heard that his former 
colleague had made money out of the sale and re-sale of 
the Paddington Works, but that, if he chose to give Bray- 
ford employment in connexion with a little business which 
Brayford had started, he could keep himself and “ the 
Wonner ” continually occupied. He had, therefore, vowed 
he would see Robinson that day, for “ the Wonner ” had 
com))lained for the first time since their troubles that he 
was hungry. 

Ml-. Brayford had called at Robinson’s office, in the 
city, three times; he had followed Mr. Robinson to his 
club ; he had been on his track all day. He walked along 
Regent Street, as the shops were all closing, towards Han- 
over Square, witli the intention of posting himself outside 
Robinson’s house until he came home. He was hungry 
himself now, and the little money ovving to him and “the 
Wonner” for their last job was not due until the morning. 

As he turned to go into the square, Mr. Robinson’s 
brougham passed him, and he saw his old colleague’s face 
in the light of a gas-lanip. He ran aftei* the carriage, and 
stopped with it opposite Mr. Robinson’s house. His hunger 
goaded him, it made him angry to see his former colleague 
with a fine carriage and horses, while he grovelled, as he 
had tried to explain to “ the Wonner,” in the gutter. At that 


CRUEL LONDON, 


218 


moment l:e hated Mr. Robinson even more than he hatec 
Mr. JercMninl) Sleaford and tlie entire Sleaford family. 

Tlie liaiidle of the carriage-door was cautiously turned. 
A footman lea])ed down from the steps, and opened the door 
of the house with a latch-key. 

JMr. Robinson stej)ped from the brougham, and proceeded 
to hand out a lady with a child in her arms. 

Brayford noted all this as he stood in the shadow of 
tlie carriage-lamps. 

Insteatl of taking the hand carefully held out to assist 
her, the woman bent her head, darted beneath Robinson’s 
arm, and ran with the speed of an antelope. 

Robinson and the footman were after her in a moment, 
and Brayford after them. The woman screamed loudly as 
Robinson caught her. He seized her savagely. 

The next moment he was sprawling in the road, and the 
footman as suddenly found it desirable to run to a place of 
safety on the other side of the way. 

A cautious policeman, who had witnessed the incident, 
noticed tliat the person who had been knocked down 
gatlier.d himself together as if to resent the attack. He 
tlierefore, walked quietly round the next street, so as to 
enter the square from another point. When became back to 
the scene of the disturbance, the combatants were no longer 
there. The woman was gone; the child was gone; their 
champion had disappeared. All was quiet at the house of 
Mr. Robinson. No carriage stood at the door. A group of 
people at the corner of the street were talking about a 
fight. P. C. XX marched courageously into their midst, 
and demanding “What’s up?” also in the same breath 
requested the- loiterers to “ Move on ! ” But the little crowd 
declined to obey the latter injunction, though it was very 
communicative in reply to the former. P. C. XX took 
out a book, made some notes, wrote down several addresses ; 
and presently Hanover Square resumed its ordinary appear- 
ance. 


214 


CRUEL LONDON. 


BOOK VI. 


CHAPTER I. 

A WORLD OF SNOW AND TWO LOVERS. 

“ He saith to the snow, Be thou on the earth,’’ and 
silence reigns over the valley. The squirrel seeks his shel- 
tering nook. The quail, halting upon the wing, falls dead 
in the canon. Glittering spears hang upon the mountain 
crags. The river pauses in its course. The trees moan in 
the night. Tlie firs are black. They look like funeral 
plumes. The sky is a dull leaden pall stretched over the 
face of nature. 

The miners of the Sacramento Valley huddle together 
and strengthen the timbers of their rude dwellings. They 
bid each otlier “ Good-night ” with an extra grip of the 
hand. They feel that on the morrow many of their huts 
may be as far apart as if they were divided by mighty seas. 
The air is filling with feathery particles of snow. The sky 
is being gradually shut out. All the world is hushed, as if 
hill and dale, listening to the Divine command, waited its 
solemn and sure fulfilment. “ He saith to the snow, Be 
thou on the earth.” 

On the morrow an awful silence comes, more appalling 
in its stillness than the rush and war of a tempest. Dead 
silence broods over a world of snow. Trees of snow. Hills 
of snow. White mountains tower up to an unseen sky. 
The valley creeps in snowy undulations up to the mysteri- 
ous rocks. It is the picture of a dead world, buried. 

A calm monotony of hill and dale, without a rugged 
edge. Every corner has been rounded. Even the trees, 
which thrust their branches into the chilly air, have the 


CRUEL LONDON. 


215 


raound-like form of all natural protuberances. It is a world 
of snowy hillocks, a mighty graveyard, with feathery 
plumes that moult sprays of fro-^en swansdown. 

In a well-built hut in Decker’s Gulch, among the lonely 
Californian hills, two miners sat by agiowing pine-log fire. 
The locality had been named after its fortunate owner, who 
had recently sold it to a party of capitalists in San Fran- 
cisco. The purchasers were to enter upon possession in 
the spring. In the meantime winter had seized the prop- 
erty and fixed an icy seal upon its golden treasures. 

Tristram Decker sat propped up with skins and pillows 
upon a rude bench, with his thin hand in Jack Kerman’s 
brawny fist, on the first night of the great snow of this 
winter season in the mountains of the Sacramento. A long, 
poetic face, full of lines and tokens of a hard life ; blue, 
sanguine eyes ; a spare, bony figure ; long brown hair ; 
hollow cheeks, with a hectic flush beneath the eyes; Tris- 
tram Decker was the wreck of a powerful young man. Our 
old friend Kerman, broad of shoulders, strong of limb, tall, 
stalwart, with his frank face half hidden behind thick whis- 
kers and bearj, was almost a cruel contrast to the nervous 
wasted figure of Decker, the enthusiastic lover whose face 
his persecuted countrywoman thought she had seen, in the 
days of her loneliness and trouble, loking at her over the 
hedge in the English valley of Essam. 

It was Christmas Eve. Kot alone the silence of the 
snow and the chance that they were both in a living tomb, 
but the time itself m^de tribute upon the best and noblest 
instincts of their nature. Tristram Decker believed he was 
dying of consumption. His expected end was near, though 
he continued to say he would not die until he had seen Old 
England. He had, nevertheless, his hours of depression 
when he feared that physical weakness would exhaust his 
strength of will. This was one of his bad nights. He had 
been talking to Kerman about the end. He had been sor- 
rowing over the j^rospect of his companion being left alone 
m this wilderness of snow. 

“If I could only pull through until the weather clears,” 
he said, speaking slowly and in pain. “ It is hard, after all 
your kindness, to leave you by yourself. I’ve been a deal 
of trouble to you. Jack, but you’d rather have me stay, for 
all that, dear old boy.” 

Kerman pressed the hand that lay in his as gently as if 
it had been a woman’s. 


216 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“ I think,” continued the invalid, “I think I shall have 
to go in a day or two. Jack, and I want you to get used to 
the idea of it. Don’t be afraid, as I should be if we could 
change places, when you wake some morning and find me 
lying still.” 

“ You’re depressed to-night. I have put these 
thoughts into your head by talking about Christmas,” 
Kerman replied. “You must cheer up, old boy ; it’s the 
nature of your illness that makes you gloomy ; and, instead 
of being cheerful and helping you to keep your spirits up. 
I’ve been dumpy and miserable.” 

“No, no. Jack; I think you are the best fellow in the 
world. They talk of the tenderness of a woman by a sick- 
bed, but your gentle patience couldn’t be equalled by any 
woman — excej^t one, ])erhaps — except one.” 

“Ah,” responded Kerman, “ we never know how much 
good there is in women ; fact is, we don’t understand 
them ; they’re so true and staunch that they go on being 
heroines, and keeping it a secret all the time somehow. I 
suppose a man is naturally such a selfish fool that he hasn’t 
the heart or the sense to see what a woman’s at.” 

“Now you’re thinking of Jane Crosby,” said Tristram. 

“ I’m always thinking of her.” 

“And I of Caroline Denton.” 

“ Good bless them both ! ” said Kerman. 

“Amen and Amen !” exclaimed Tristram. 

The logs on the fire settled down, and sent a cloud of 
sparks up the chimney. They looked like a swarm of 
golden bees. 

“ Your Christmas fire wants to join in our good wishes,” 
said the invalid. “How fond you are of the fire. Jack. 
Tell me about your dear old country. It seems to me as if 
I have got to know England through this fire of yours. 
I ’ve lived all my life in a land of stoves, and your fireside 
is like poetry to me, something in a story, like all your 
English history, with knights and castles in it, and always 
green valleys, old homesteads, and dreamy, moss-grown 
villages. I wish I’d gone to England when I left New 
York, that is, if I could have come across you in your own 
country.” 

“ You ought to have been a poet, Tristy,” said Kerman. 
“ What brought a fellow like you fighting Indians and dig- 
ging for gold is a puzzle to me.” 

“Tell me about your English firesides. Jack,” said 


CRUEL LONDON, 


217 


Tristram, his eyes fixed upon the red-glowing logs. “ Per- 
haps Caroline Denton is sitting by one of them. I should 
like to think so, — sitting’ with her grim old father. Ah, 
he was a hard old man, was “ Secesh Denton,” as they 
called him. It wasn’t my fault that I was a Federal 
soldier; it was the chance of birth. A man can’t help it 
if he’s born in the North ; everybody can’t be born in Mary- 
land or Virginia. What we are born at all for is a mystery 
to me. But talk of England, Jack, the only place where, 
it seems to me, it’s ever really Christmas. When I was a 
boy I always used to look at the pictures in the books and 
papers my father got from England, and read the ghost 
stories and about the yule-logs and things, and the Christ- 
mas bells ringing across the snow. There’s plenty of snow 
here. Jack; we only want the bells, my boy, — we only want 
the bells. I hope she has got a fireside to sit by. Jack, 
don’t you ? ” 

“I do, old man ; and I feel sure she has.” 

“ He said he’d sooner kill her than she should marry a 
man who had lifted a rifle against his beloved South ; and 
when I said if I had known him and his daughter I would 
have forsworn my birthright ratlier than have offended him, 
he only shrugged his shoulders impatiently. How was I 
to know he and she were living away out there in Vii'ginia 
when I mai-ched with the boys against the rebs ? You talk 
of beauty, Jack ; you should have seen that little Soutliorn 
girl. My God ! And I loved her as if I made up for only 
knowing her a fortnight by putting a lifetime into those 
fourteen days. Let’s have a drink, Jack.” 

“We will, old man, we will,” said Kerman, rising, and 
fetching a bottle of brandy from a rough but capacious cup- 
board ; “ a jorum, a hot old glass of grog, Tristy ; and we’ll 
wish ourselves all the good things of the season.” 

He hung a kettle over the tire ; he brought forth glasses, 
and a jar of lime juice. 

“I’ve got one of my talking fits on. Jack. It’s rather 
rough on you; but you won’t talk, and somebody must 
keep the game alive on Christmas Eve. Perhaps you’d like 
a hand at" cards. Jack? Let’s play for tlie chest, and the 
claim, and the Gulch, and the hut, and the whole lot; 
that’ll wake you up.” 

“No, Tristy; cards will wake me up no more.” 

“I shall not forget the night when you stood between 
me and that murdering thief at Sharky Nat’s hell. You’re 


218 


CRUEL LONDON, 


a brave fellow, Jack ; you don’t know how brave you were 
that night. You English fellows never do know. You 
ought to have been laid out that night, Jack.” 

“ I expect I did,” said Kerman, measuring the brandy 
and lime-juice, and pouring it into a jug. 

“ You saved my life, and how you got off without a 
knife in your heart or a bullet in your brain, hang me if I 
know.” 

“ Luck, old man, luck,” replied Kerman. 

“ I’m going to walk about a bit,” said Tristram, getting 
up from his cushions and skins. “ I’m going to help you 
brew the punch.” 

“ That’s right,” said Kerman. “ Bravo ! we shall make 
a nierry Christmas of it yet. Get me the sugar, Tristy.” 

The American staggered a little as he crossed the floor 
of the cabin, but he opened the cupboard, and struggled 
with a great jar of sugar, which he managed to place upon 
the table. 

“ By the sacred stars and stripes, Jack, I feel ever so 
much better than I did two hours ago. What a wonderful 
thing if I should get better ! ” 

“If you should get better? You shall, old man ; you 
shall,” said the Englishman, ladling out the sugar, with a 
wooden spoon, into the jug. 

“ But supposing. Jack, I should get better only to find 
that we are buried alive. You don’t know Avh.at snow 
means in the Sacramento, ray dear friend. You don’t 
know.” 

Ti-istrara spoke solemnly, and looked into the face of his 
friend. 

“ And is that how thou art going to talk just as soon as 
thou gets a bit better? Thour’t a nice Job’s comforter, as 
owd Kester o’ the Manor Farm in the Marsh would say.” 

“ I like to hear you do that dialect, Jack, because I 
know you are happy, thinking of your native land. I should 
like to see it. I suppose old Secesh Denton did take his 
daughter across ; he said he should in another name, and 
that they should forget and be forgotten. I was a poor 
devil then, or I should never have left the track of them ; 
and 1 only came out to this claim in the hope of getting 
money enough to find them and make them rich, without 
them knowing where the gold came from. That was my 
plan. For I don’t think that bitter old cuss had a thousand 
dollars left out of all he was once worth.” 


CRL'EL LONDON. 


210 


The American had sat down again while he was talking, 
and Kerman had brewed the grog. 

“ Now, old man,” said Jack, “let’s wish each other* A 
Merry Christmas and a Happy Hew Year.’” 

“ That’s the regular thing,” said Kerman,- jug in hand. 

“ Kow, then, we’ll drink to Jane and Caroline, married or 
single, God bless them ! ” 

Kerman’s voice trembled, and Tristram said : 

“ God bless them ! ” adding, “ married or single. That’s 
got too much bitters, Jack.” 

“ You Americans like bitters,” said Kerman, “ and I’ve 
begun to think they’re good. I heard a fellow sing a song 
at the Footlight Club in London, called “ Life’s a bumper, 
filled by Fate,” and I often think Fate’s given you and me 
an extra dose of bitters ; but it’s better to take ’em straight 
and not complain ; so I say married or single. I’ve every 
reason to think Jane is married. I know Miss Caroline 
Denton’s happiness is all you care for; and women do get 
married, Tristy, old man, and there’s su.ow and ice and seas 
between us and the girls we love. It’s true your little lady 
knows you love her. My great-hearted Lincolnshire lass 
doesn’t know I care much about her — I didn’t know it my- 
self before it was too late. Ah, well, it can’t be helped. 

I expect we’re a couple of old fools, Tristy. Now I’m 
Rawing away like a Yankee orator — no stopping me once 
I’m set going, and I wanted you to do all the talking to- 
night.” 

He drained his glass, pulled out a pipe, lighted it, sat 
down, and commenced to smoke. 

“ I don’t think your ideas of love exactly fit in with 
mine,” said Tristram, musingly. 

“ Have a cigar,” said Kerman, “ and tell me your ideas.” 

“ Yes, I’ll have a smoke. How many cigars have we ? ” 

“ Oh, plenty,” said Kerman, going to the cupboard and 
bringing out a handful— “ plenty to see us into the spring.” 

“ Plenty, because you leave them all to me. I believe 
you’d swear you hated brandy, if you thought there wasn’t 
enough for both of us ; you’re a queer generous old cuss, 
Jack, that you are.” 

The American lighted his cigar, and the two men smoked 
silently for some time, looking into the fire. They pre- 
tended not to notice the hissing which the red logs made 
every now and then, telling of the continued falling of the 
snow. The firelight threw weird flashes upon the rough 


220 


CRUEL LONDON. 


wooden benches, upon the blackened hearth, and up among 
the multifarious tools, cooking utensils, dried fish, hams, 
herbs, and kettles, that hung upon the cross-beams beneath 
the tarred timber roof. 

“Look here, Jack,” said Tristram, presently. “The 
better the day, they say, the better the deed. I’ve made my 
will. I wish I’d. done it before the snow came, because I 
guess it’ll be a long time before Old Chump or any of ’em 
get up here from the Re*d Indian bar or the camp down 
yonder, and I wouldn’t wonder if they’re not all buried 
down there before the week’s out. j knew what I was 
about when I prospected this claim, and fixed on Landell’s 
Corner for our brown stone front. Trust an old hand ! I 
guess we’re two of the richest men in California ; at least, 
one of us will be. Jack — one of us. Hand out your pens 
and paper. I’m going to sling ink.” 

“ No, no ; sit quiet, and let us talk.” 

“ I thought I was the boss here,” said Tristram, with 
an acted air of authority. 

“You’re the boss ; yes, old man, you’re the boss.” 

“ Very well, then, I tell you I’m going to sling ink, old 
John Bull. I’ve made my will, and I’m just going to write 
it out. It’s not exactly a will ; it’s just to show I’ve no 
title to the gold nor claim, and that it is all yours, Jack. 
Pull it out, John Bdl, and let us have a look at it.” 

“ I’m going to do what you ask me, Tristy, just to please 
you and pass the time, that’s all, mind. I’d rather you 
didn’t write anything, and I don’t want you to look at that 
dross. It seems to me that we ought to be thinking of 
something more serious than money matters. I’ll bet a 
trifie there will be no opening the door in the morning.” 

“ Serious ! Now there’s a crusty old cuss. I never was 
more serious in my life. Money ? Don’t despise money.” 

“ If it could buy us a track down to the camp, a high- 
way into the valley, and a free passage through the snow, 
I would worship it. I have known what it is to have 
money, as much as a man could want, but not more than a 
fool can spend.” 

“ I thought you had. I guessed it long ago, but you are 
as close as a clam ; you will never tell a man about it ; 
you’re all alike, you English fellows who come out here — 
vou’ve all got some secret along, and you chew it like a 
Vank, with an everlasting quid in your mouth.” 

“ Oh, no, it’s no secret. I had a heap of money left me. 


\^CRUEL LONDON. 


221 


I was an ignorant, conceited chap, and I went to London 
with it, to be a gentleman, and I worked at being a gentle- 
man, as liard as you and me have worked together getting 
these chests filled. ’’ 

I “London!” mused Tristram. “I’ll never see your 
London, Jack.” 

“ You needn’t want to, though you’d know how to deal 
with it. I thought I did, but London’s like one of the flasli 
women at Frisco — fine to look at, cruel as— — ” 

“ The snow,” said the American. “ D’ye hear how it 
hisses in the fire ? And I thought I heard the wind ; hope 
not.” 

“ Crueller than the snow, Tristy, because you know what 
the snow means; it looks you hard and cold in the face, 
and begins to wall you in and spin your winding-she et. 
But London cheats you all the time ; it robs you on the 
score of friendship ; it will trample on love, and everything 
men and women hold dear, for money ; and when you’ve 
got no money left, it jeers at you and leaves you to starve. 
One day, my boy, I was rich, the next day I was poor. I 
went to tlie docks an^ bought my passage to New York, 
gave the agent £100, so that I couldn’t touch it, and then 
I went to have a last look round I thought I’d try what 
London was made of. I went to a swell club, which my 
money got me into, I borrowed £10 of a man, just to pay a 
billiard debt, hadn’t my checque-book about me, I said. 
He gave it me at once. Then I went to a dear friend, to 
whom I had rendered many services, told him I was ruined 
utterly beyond hope, and begged him to lend me £100, 
Tie asked me if I thought he was a fool, and turned away. 
Presently the man who had lent me the £10 came, and 
hemmed and hah’d, and said, on second thoughts, he want- 
ed that ten-pound note himself; the other friend had split 
on me. I took the trouble to listen to the conversation of 
three or four men in the smoke-room. I stood in the shade 
behind the screen. They said I’d come to grief at last, and 
served me right. My affected generosity was damned os- 
tentation. I was a pretentious agricultural booby. I 
hadn’t the courage to come out and acknowledge their com- 
pliments ; I sneaked away through the busy streets, with 
the lights flashing, went to the docks, and got into my berth. 
The next day we dropped down the Thames, and I was 
happy. I’d done my best to make others happy, and I 
seemed as if J’d just earned my* liberty.” 


222 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“ I like to hear you talk,” said the American ; let me 
get into my bunk, Jack, and then talk me to sleep ; I feel 
like that ; but tell me about the old house where you were 
reared, with the fire on the hearth, and the dog and that 
girl, and the old woman.” 

The American turned into his berth. Kerman trimmed 
the oil lamp, put another log on the fire, brewed more punch, 
relighted his pipe, and talked all the time to his friend, who 
lay dozing and listening like a child soothed by an old 
wife’s story. 

“ It’s all so different in England, old man, everything’s 
finished — the land is under regular cultivation ; as for that 
old kitchen at the Manor Farm, there’s nothing like it on 
tliis side. At Christmas we used to bring in a great log 
and pack it on a red coal fire. You could sit in the ingle 
nook, and there was a great kettle singing on the hob, and 
Jane would come in and help Kester to make a great spiced 
bowl, hot and steaming, with dried apples floating on the 
top; and the farm men would sit round the fire; and then 
the waits would come and sing about the Babe of Bethle- 
hem and — ” / 

Here Kerman paused. The American was sleeping 
calm and still. Kerman went to the door. The entrance 
to the cabin was half blocked up with snow. A bank of it 
three or four feet high fell in upon him. He covered Decker 
up to protect him from the wind, and then attacked the 
snow with a shovel. He now wished that they had engaged 
men to help them in the Gulch, or given some of the miners 
at Nipper’s Creek a share of the claim, so that they might 
have had neighbors to help them in this battle with winter. 
It was hard work, one spade against a world of snow. But 
the English miner worked with a will, until long after mid- 
night ; and daylight brought ample evidence of the hard 
necessity of his labors. 


CRUEL LONDON. 


223 


CHAPTER II. 

USELESS TREASURES. 

But the daylight brought no change in the aspect of 
nature. The snow continued to fall, and Kerman renewed 
his attack upon it, keeping a clear space in front of the hut. 
Hope is courage, and Kerman put the strength of both into 
ills shovel. 

“ It can’t go on snowing forever,” he said ; “ and we 
have plenty to eat and drink.” 

“ But if the wind gets up the snow will drift, and, all of 
a sudden, we may have a mountain upon us,” said Tris- 
tar m. ' 

The two men were having breakfast, and it was Christ- . 
mas Bay, 

“Well, we can only die once, Tristy,” said Kerman. 

“ We don’t want to die yet,” said the invalid. 

“ Why, last night you were going to square up with 
Crossbones almost at once.” 

“ Yes ; it was one of my bad days, but I was quite 
right about the will, and while you’ve been shovelling at 
the snow, like your friend, Mrs. Partington, with the mop 
at the sea, iVe just written it down.” 

He took from a pocket-book a sheet of note paper, and 
read to Kerman his last will and testament, wiiich gave to 
Kei'man the entire claim of Becker’s Gulch, making him 
the vendor to the San Franciaco Company, and stating th.at 
all the gold in the chest at their hut belonged to the same 
man, who had got most of it with his own hands. There 
was only' one condition : Kerman was to go to England, 
find out old Secesh Benton, and convey to him, in some 
way that would not wound his pride, the value of at least 
one-third of the property. 

“ I’ll tell you how you’ll do that, Jack. You’ll goto 
New York, and get hold of a clever lawyer, a judge. His 
name is Clinch ; you’ll easily find him. He is a square, 
downright fellow. He knows Benton. Youfil tell Clinch 
that he’s got to make the fiery old reb, believe that the gov- 
ernment has restored to him in money a part of what they 


224 


CRUEL LONDON. 


stole from him. That will satisfy his pride. You’ll go to 
one of those jewelry stores, and buy something for her, 
with my name engraved on it, and if she’s married, see her 
husband, ask him to let her wear it. And, if the old man 
is dead, — I’ve thought it all out, you see, like a lawyer, — 
why, the money is hers. You’ll manage that; and if any- 
body has behaved cruelly to her, or deceived her, or done 
her a wrong, you’ll avenge her for me.” 

“ How' do you mean, Tristram ? ” 

“ One day in the summer — the very day you struck that 
lode which has made you so rich, I was sitting out by the 
corner, wondering why the Almiglity should have given 
all the beauty of the earth to the Indian, and, having done 
so, why he should let us come and tear it up for gold, when 
I saw a face look out at me from the ‘ brush ’ that covers 
that side of the mountain. It was her face, and it looked 
so sad and mournful that the tears came into my eyes as I 
gazed upon it. The reality of it was so intense, that I did 
.not doubt but Caroline was there before me. I went to- 
wards her. It was only a face, and it faded away as I ap- 
proached it. That was an appeal for help. It was not 
death. She would not come then, because she would know 
there would be two deaths if she did. It was poverty. It 
meant that we were to work at the vein we had discovered. 
It meant that the old man’s money had run out, and that I 
should be quick and get rich and go to his aid. That is 
how I read it. And it meant more ; it signified that she 
was true tome, that I might still hope; and so. Jack, 
while you were thinking me a money-grubber, a keen, selfish 
Yank after gold, I was working for her.” 

“And killing yourself, as I have told you often enough.” 

“ No, no, the seeds of my disease were laid in long ago, 
and I wasn’t going to let you do all the work. I was too 
selfish not to want to feel that I, having won some of the 
money, had the right to give it away.” 

“ Wliy, isn’t the claim yours ? Was it not yours from 
the first ? And am I anything else but an interloper ? ” 

“ Bear with me. Jack. I want to tell you everything, 
so that you will be well posted if we should be separated. 
Do you know why I say ‘ if,’ this morning?” 

“ To make up for being so contrary about it last night.” 

“No ! I dreamt this morning — and I believe in morn- 
ing dreams — that I was getting well, and that the doctor, 
up from the Indian bar, came and said I was wanted in 


CRUEL LONDON. 


225 


Loudon, and that he laughed at me when I s!iid I couldn't 
travel so far, and I woke with his last words in my ear — 
‘You’ll go to that there London'!’ he said, — you know 
his rough, uneducated style, — ‘ you’ll go to that infernal 
Babylon, and have a rare old time.’ ” 

“ Good for old Bolus,” said Kerman ; “ and I believe 
him.” 

“ Then we understand each other ? ” 

“ Hope so.” 

“ But you think I am strange, and your practical mind 
don’t sympathize with visions and dreams.” 

“ I don’t know ; I never had much experience of them, 
but a year or two among these mountains would make me 
a believer in spirits and the rest, there is something so 
solemn in the look of the world about here.” 

“Hush, a moment.” 

Decker went to a small cupboard in a corner of the 
room. Three drinking glasses placed in an inverted posi- 
tion upon one of the shelves were carefully examined. He 
closed tlie cupboard. 

“ I knew it,” he said. 

“ Your weather-glasses are at work, eh ? ” said Kerman, 
with a smile. 

“ It’s an old test. Inverted glasses on a shelf placed 
like that foretell storms of wind. They sound an alarm. 
On the coast where I was brought up it was infallible. W e 
are going to have a storm of wind.” 

Kerman went to the door. The snow had ceased to 
fall. The sun was getting up behind them. A grey mist 
brooded over the vast expanse of hill and dale. The sun 
seemed to dwell upon it. A fog-bow appeared in the sky ; 
and beneath it the form of a cross. 

“ Come here. Decker, quick ! ” cried Kerman. 

Decker hurried to the door. 

“What’s that?” 

“A phenomenon peculiar to mountainous countries. It 
is common in the Arctic regions and in the Alps. In the 
Hartz they see spectres. But I’ve never seen the figure of 
a cross before.” 

As he spoke, the phenomenon disappeared. Kerman 
looked anxiously at Decker. 

“ What’s the meaning of it ? ” 

“ It’s an omen.” 

“ Of what ? ” 


226 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“That God will not desert us. It is Christmas Daj. 
He sends us the great sign-manual of His goodness, the 
Cross of Christ.” 

The face of the American lighted up as he spoke with a 
sublime expression of tenderness and hope. 

Kerman bent his head reverently. 

“Let us go in, Jack, and pray. Don’t let us be ashamed 
of our feelings ; don’t let us be afraid to speak to God in 
each other’s hearing. We shall want His aid before long. 
Your shovel will be no good against a tempest of wind.” 

They re-entered the hut. 

“You’ve upset me, Decker. I feel as if some calamity 
was about to fall upon us.” 

“ Why, you look frightened, Jack.” 

“ I am frightened.” 

“ It is strangely quiet, is it not ? — no sounds of life, not 
even an echo from the Indian bar, not a sound from Nipper’s 
Creek. It may be that we are the onlyJiving people this 
side the Gulch. Did you notice that part of the mountain, 
where I saw her face in the summer, had slipped away? ” 

“ No ; how do you mean slipped?” 

“ Jerked right away into the valley ; Nipper’s Creek is 
below there. Boss Maggs and his crew are down on the 
river, I shouldn’t wonder, under ten thousand tons of rock 
and snow.” 

“ And this is Christmas Day,” said Kerman. 

“ Shut your eyes. Jack, if you’re ashamed to be a man, 
and confess yourself less than Him who sent the bow and 
the cross, and say your prayers to yourself.” 

Decker knelt by a chair. Kerman went out into the 
open air, and looked in the direction of the mountain of which 
Decker had spoken. The whole side of the ridge appeared 
as if it had given way. It had left a dark patch behind, 
and in the valley below there was no longer any trace of 
Nipper’s Creek. 

“ Good Lord, have mercy upon them ! ” exclaimed 
Kerman. 

That was all the prayer he said. 

“Mnggs and his lot are done for,” he said, as he went 
back into the hut. ^ 

Decker had dragged out before the fire the chest of 
gold. 

“ I thought you were going to pray to God, and I find 
you’re worshipping the devil,” said Kerman. 


CRUEL LONDON, 


227 


“TTiis is not the devil.” 

“ Put it away, Tristv. I hate it.” 

“Why?” 

“ Those fellows would have been alive now, but for this 
infernal thirst of gold.” 

“No; they might have been killed trying to rescue 
drowning men at sea. No, Jack, gold is God, if you use it 
well.” 

“ Don’t be profane. Just now I felt a certain amount of 
security because you could pray, and I was awkward at it, 
and now you are insulting God, for didn’t the heathens sot 
up a golden calf instead of him ? ” 

“Nonsense, Jack. He planted gold for us to find, and 
He gives it to some men without taxing head or heart to 
show His contempt for it. When rightly used. He blesses 
it ; when wrongfully dealt with, it carries a curse.” 

Decker paused as he spoke, and, taking ujd a piece of 
gold larger than the others, he said, — 

“Why, Jack, there’s blood upon this; and on this 1” 


CHAPTER III. . 

FIGHTING THE TEMPEST. 

Kerman took the ore from Decker’s hands. “ It is not 
blood,” he said. He wiped it upon his coat-sleeve. “ It is 
the redness of the earth where we got it.” 

“ Yes, I see,” said Decker, taking it from his companion, 
and dropping it among the rest in the locker. 

“Your manner is very strange to-day, Decker; put the 
stuff away.” 

“ I have been thinking of our riches ever since daylight.” 

“ Our poverty, you mean,” said Kerman, as he com- 
menced to clear away the remains of their breakfast. 

“ Poverty,” said Decker, smiling ; “ do you know how 
rich we are ? ” 

“ I know how'poor we are,” said Kerman. 

“ I tell you, man, we are wealthy beyond description ; 
rich enough to buy Monte Cristo’s cavern of gems, if there 
ever was such a place.” 


228 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“I never heard of it,” said Kerman, putting away thfe 
last article of crockeryware which formed their breakfast 
service. 

“ Did you ever read about it ? ’ 

Never. 

“Ah, Jack, you have many pleasures to come.” 

“ 1 hope so.” 

“ Do you know that our shares in the gold of Decker’s 
Gulch, and the veins which belong to it for two miles 
round, may yield us fifty thousand dollars, a week ? We 
are the possessors of an El Dorado. Do you know that we 
have found the Philosopher’s Stone ? 1 don’t think you 

realize it old man.” 

Kerman pulled out his pipe, filled it, lighted it, and 
commenced to smoke. 

“ If I die, Kerman, you wdll be one of the richest men 
in the world. Think of it, man ! You will be a Midas — a 
Croesus ; you will possess the piirse of Fortunatus.” 

“ Boss Maggs had a pretty good pile of gold in his bunk 
yesterday,” said Kerman. 

“ Boss Maggs ! ” exclaimed Decker, impatiently. “ Why 
you don’t think this chest of gold beais any comparison to 
what we’ve got? You’ve told me of your English farmers 
showing samples of their grain in little bags. This trifle of 
ore. Jack, is only a specimen of tlie bulk. You should 
have seen the face of the San Francisco men when I showed 
them one lump of it ! Why in a few months from now. 
Jack, the country for miles round our property will swarm 
with prospectors and miners seeking for a mere streak of 
the gold we have got in layers.” 

“ Yes, I understand that you have made your fortune,” 
said Kerman, “ and that I have enough to enable me to be- 
gin my genteel studies again with a good balance.” 

Kerman never could speak of his London experiences 
without a sneer. He emphasised the word genteel with a 
contemptuous wave of his hand. 

“ You can’t be a true gentleman wdthout having read 
‘Monte Christo,’” said Decker, smiling; “and you cer- 
tainly will never understand the power of money without 
studying it.” 

“ Is it a work on fashion, etiquette, banking, or what ? ” 

“ On all three,” rejAied Decker, in a patronizing manner, 
which he sometimes assumed towards his companion. 


CRUEL LONDON. 229 

“ If Maggs had read it, would he have been alive to- 
day?” 

“ Not unless he had had as good a partner as you have, 
then he might.” 

How’s that ? ” 

“ Maggs didn’t understand the first principle of mining, 
where to fix your quarters. Now we are perched in the 
safest nook of the whole region.” 

“ Yes, we are perched,” said Kerman. “ That’s iust it.” 

“Well?” 

“ Why, anything like that landslip which has settled 
Maggs’s lot would wipe us out ; we shouldn’t have time to 
say good-by.” 

“ Bah ! the fog bow has unnerved you. Jack.” 

“ It has,” said Kerman ; “ and I’ll tell you what it is, 
dear boy : 1 can’t sit here any longer and see you finger that 
infernal dross; put it away.” 

lie put down his pipe, and laid his hand upon the lid of 
the chest, saying, “ Don’t you know this is Christmas Day ? 
You seem to have forgotten it all in a few minutes. Just 
now you were praying, and now you are selling your soul 
to the devil.” 

Decker rose to his feet, and allowed Kerman to close 
the lid and drag the locker into its accustomed place. 

“ There, now sit down, and let us talk.” 

“ All right, old man. You are right ; when I begin 
fingering the gold it changes me — it seems to fire my blood. 
Jack, she shall walk on it ; she shall have golden staircases ; 
her house shall be a house of jewels. She shall have silks 
from India, furs from Russia, diamonds that have been cut 
for the queens of Europe, gems from the temples of Eastern 
gods.” 

Kerman had twice seen Decker under the morbid in- 
fiuence of this mad passion of gold and love. Once before 
the young man had worked himself up into a wild paroxysm, 
in which he had alternately prayed and cursed. The un- 
excitable Englishman thought it best to resist this craze by 
prosaic remarks, or phlegmatic disregard of Decker’s 
ravings. 

“ Supposing she’s married, like my Jane ? ” he said. 

“ I’ll buy him,” replied Decker, quickly. 

“ Buy him ? ” observed Kerman. “ That’s a queer 
idea.” 

“Yes,” said Decker, seating himself cross-legged upon a 


230 


CRUEL LONDON. 


rude wooden chair, liaving his arms on the back, rest- 
ing his chin upon his arms, and looking straight at Ker- 
man, “ I’ll buy her, if necessary. If I live, nothing shall 
separate us.” 

“ You can’t buy people. Decker.” 

“ Money can buy everything and everybody.” 

“ Not an honest woman’s love.” 

“ Something so much like it that you can’t tell the dif- 
ference.” 

“ But supposing she is married, and loves her husband ? ” 

“ She couldn’t love him.” 

“ But if he refused to give her up ? ” 

Decker stood up to emphasize what he was going to say. 
“I’d kill him I” he exclaimed ; “I’d shoot him.” 

“ What, for loving a woman whom you couldn’t resist 
yourself ? ” 

“ Kerman, I would shoot him,” said Decker, his eyes 
flashing, his frame trembling. 

“ And then I should lose my friend and partner,” said 
Kerman, smiling, and pretending to treat the whole matter 
lightly, and as if Decker was joking. 

“ How, Jack, how ? ” 

“ They’d hang you.” 

“Who would?” 

“ A judge and jury.’’’ 

“ What ! hang a man with his hands full of gold ? Put 
away one of the richest men in the world ?” 

Decker laughed derisively at the bare suggestion of such 
a disregard of the influence of money. 

“ By the Lord, Decker, they’d hang you in England if 
you owned all the gold mines in the earth ! Damme, I 
think they’d hang you all the more on that account.” 

“Would they? Then I don’t think much of your civ- 
ilization.” 

“ You’re not in earnest. Decker? ” 

“ I am.” 

“ What! do you call it a proper use of money to bribe 
Justice? ” 

“Why, certainly, if Justice stands between you and the 
woman of your choice. To have gold. Jack, is to have the 
master-key. Listen, old friend, I never was more serious 
in my life. I’m going to do whatever I please, if I live. If 
I die, the talisman is yours and hers. I would coin my heart 
for that woman, pawn my hopes of heaven, and when I say 


CRUEL LONDON. 


231 


|;hat, you can understand what it means, for you have seen 
me pray. Do you know why my soul is in such a whirl to- 
day ? ” 

“ No.” 

“ Shall I tell you?” 

“ Yes.” 

“ I arn better. That is one reason. My cough has not 
troubled me for fonr-and-twenty hours. I believe I am 
going to recover. And I am suffering from rembrse.” He 
])aused and sighed. 

“ Well ? ” said Kerman. 

“ I ought never to have left her. I ought to have fol- 
lowed in her footsteps, and watched and waited. By this 
time she might have been mine.” 

“ She may be yet.” 

“ Another obstacle is growing up between us now that I 
am getting better.” 

“ What obstacle? ” 

“Do you hear the wind?” 

A low moan sounded far away in the distance. Again 
the snow hissed on the burning logs. 

“ That,” said Decker, pointing to the fire, and alluding 
to the snow, “ and that,” nodding his head towards the 
door, “ the wind more particularly.” 

“I thought you didn’t care for one or the other.” 

“ I blame myself for letting her go,” he replied, as if 
speaking to himself. “J wasn't selfish enough. Love is 
selfish — real, true, absorbing love. Its yearnings are selfish 
as the grave. Mine was not love. I should have taken her 
from her father. I could have done so. If she had been 
mine, only for a week, and we had then died, that would 
have been life. Yesterday, I had given her up. To-day, 
I am strong. God has given me new life, and with it gold 
that opens all doors, clears all paths, commands everything 
except the tempest. And it seems as if He was about to 
snatch away the cup just as I am thinking of being able to 
raise it to my lips. There ! That’s what I mean^ Jack, I’m 
not so mad as you think me.” 

He took a cigar from his jacket pocket, sat down, and 
commenced to smoke. 

“ Yes, that wind isn’t a comfortable visitor,” remarked 
Kerman, reflectively ; “and the snow’s come on again. I 
must tackle it just now. What bothers me most, Tristy, 


232 


CRUEL LONDON. 


is the weight of it that’s accumulating on the top of - the 
hut.” 

“ Oh, that’ll slip away ; don’t bother about that. What 
we’ve got to fear is the wind driving a drift upon us. You 
can get at the wood-stack still for the fire ? ” 

“ Yes ; I’ve kept that clear so far.” 

“ Things might have been worse. We don’t suffer much 
from the cold, and we’ve plenty of provisions. In the 
x\rctic regions you have to chop your liquor with a hatchet, 
and boil it before you drink it ; your beard freezes, and is 
hung with icicles ; and if you take up your gun thought- 
lessly, without several gloves on your hands, the skin peels 
off upon the weapon. We are saved all that.” 

“ Yes,” said Kerman, “ there’s always a deeper hole than 
the one you’re in.” 

He went to the door as if to answer the knock of a visi- 
tor. It was the wind that shook it. He opened it. A 
cloud of snow entered, driven by a gust of wind. 

Darkness fell upon the hut. 

“ And it is only twelve o’clock,” said Decker. 

“We shan’t forget this Christinas Day in a hurry, 
Tristy,” said Kerman, sorrowfully. 

“ I think we shall. Jack, old man,” replied Decker now 
as much depressed as he had previously been excited. 

“ There’s nothing to be done ? ” said Kerman, in a tone 
of inquiry. 

“ It might be as well to board up the window,” said 
Decker. “ That was nothing you heard just now, only the 
wind shovelling the snow off the roof ; our fire has warmed 
the eaves. We’ve plenty of candles, that’s a comfort.” 

Kerman lighted two as he spoke. 

“ I’m going to open the door again,” said Kerman. “ I 
fancy that was only a strong gust of wind, and we must 
have some wood in.” 

He opened the door. The snow came in again, but 
with much less force. Kerman went out. Half blinded he 
crawled to the wood-stack, which he had hitherto kept 
tolerably free from the snow. He dragged a few logs out 
and reappeared, while and shivering. His return changed 
the atmosphere of the hut. His breath was like smoke. He 
had not properly refastened the dopr. The wind banged 
it open, and a white column came whirling in. There was 
:i snowstorm on the very hearth. Decker dashed at the 
door and shut it. Neither of the men spoke for some time. 


CRUEL LOXDON. 


238 


The wind howled. Kerman heaped the logs upon the fire. 

“Let’s drink old Father Christmas’s health, Decker,” 
said Kerman, presently, producing a bottle of brandy; 
perhaps he’ll like it, and not be so rough on us.” 

“ All right. Jack.” 

“ They’d call this seasonable weather in England.” 

“ I wish it was next week, Jack.” 

“ Why ? ” 

“We shall be either dead or doing well next week.” 

“ Here’s to you, Father Christmas ! ” said Kerman ; 

“ and 1 hope you won’t smother us with your seasonable 
attentions, most worthy monarch ! ” 

“ Good,” said Decker, raising his glass. “ Don’t forget 
us, old Santa Claus. It doesn’ look as if there were any in- 
liabitants hereabouts; but there are, dear old boss, and if 
we get out of this, there will be no end to the presents we’ll 
make in your honor ! ” 

Decker tossed off the contents of his glass. The wind 
came down the chimney and drove the smoke all over the 
place. 

“ Neither your Father Christmas nor my Santa Claus 
appears to care much about us, Jack,” said Decker, “ and 
it doesn’t seem much good praying just at present. Na- 
ture’s a curious institution, Kerman. It came into my mind, 
this minute, the story of the parson, who, in a storm at sea, 
was told by the captain all had been done that was possi- 
ble, and they must now trust in Providence. “ Mercy on 
us,” exclaimed the minister, “ and are we reduced to that ?” 

“ I don’t think it’s just the time, Tristy, to be humor- 
ous,” said Kerman, as he commenced to nail a board over 
the window, which had long since ceased to exhibit any 
view to the eye except a blockade of snow. 

“ No, it isn’t, but human nature is a sassy critter, as my 
old colonel used to say. I remember falling into a rebel am- 
buscade in Virginia, and felt for certain my time was come, 
and the only thought that crossed my mind was a sense of 
satisfaction that I had at least lived long enough to thrash a 
bummer who used to worry me around when we were 
schoolfellows. I have been pretty near the end of the 
street more than once or twice, Kerman ; but I was never- 
scared before now. If this weather keeps on for four and 
twenty hours we are gone coons ! ” 

They sat and talked until dinner-time. They ate heartily 
and drank hot grog. They talked of their lives — they 


234 


CRUEL LONDON, 


talked of death. Kerman was foiled in his second atteinpli 
to bring in wood. A bank of snow seemed to fall upon 
him. The wind brought the snow in its arms, and flung 
it into the corner where the cabin was “perched.” When 
the door -was at last shut again, the snow drove in through 
the crevice at the bottom. Kerman packed the crevice 
with a rug. 

Night brought the two men face to face with death. 

Kerman discovered that the roof nearest the mountain 
which hitherto had seemed to protect tliem, was bulging 
and giving way. He made an effort to prop it. The wind 
liad lifted a bank of snow from an adjacent ledge, and 
dropped it upon the hut. At midnight, in spite of every 
effort to prop it, two of the timbers fell in with a crash, 
burying the store-cupboard with snow, and extinguisliing 
the lights. The snow seemed to come in with a thud, as if 
a dead body had been thrown in upon them. The Are- 
leaped up as the candles were extinguished, showing the 
Avreck in all its cold horror. ' The wind came in fierce and 
shrill through the roof with fresh accumulations of snow. 

“ If we stay here. Jack, we shall be buried alive,” said 
Decker. 

“We can’t get out,” Kerman replied calmly; “ the 
joists and jambs have settled down upon the door. A giant 
couldn’t oj)en it.” 

“ There’s the window,” said Decker, in a hoarse whisper. 

“ And the snow grave beneath it,” Kerman replied. 

The Lincolnshire squire filled his pipe and sat down by 
the fire, which cast warm gleams upon the increasing bank 
of snow that was filling up one side of the hut. 

“ Can you smoke at such a time as this? ” asked Decker, 
reprovingly. 

“Yes; but it’s all I can do.” 

“If the other part of the roof goes, it’s all over with us.” 
_ “ Yes, that would put my pipe out ; but I don’t think it 

will go. The fall at the back has relieved the top of half 
the w'eight of snow that rested on it.” 

As he spoke a sudden moan was heard high up in the 
hills, and with it came a crashing blow upon the cabin. It 
trembled, and all in a moment there was no longer any fire, 
and Kerman found himself struggling beneath the falling 
timbers and suffocating snow. With a tremendous effort 
he cleared his head of thej^ight that had borne him down. 
He could not see, but he could breathe. There was a voice 


CRUEL LONDON. 


235 


as of thunder in his ears. He thought he heard the wreck 
of the cabin Imrled down into tlie valley, and he wondered 
that he remained stationary. The snow fell u]>on his face. 
He was afraid to speak. The wind moaned. It seemed to 
pelt him with snow. He tried to move his arms — one of 
them was free. He rested it on the snow as a lever for his 
body". Fearful to move, he was nevertheless anxious to 
know if he could. He could not. When he tried to speak, 
his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. He moistened 
his li|)s with snow. Presently he called out, “Decker! 
Deckel’ ! ” 

It was like speaking in a vault. The sound of his voice 
seemed to come back upon him. 

“Decker ! Tristram Decker! ” he cried. 

The only answer was a dead, solemn, chilling silence. 
Even the mockery of an echo was denied to the man. And 
the snow kept falling as if bent on burying him alive 
secretly. Some such thought occurred to the despairing 
victim of the storm. 

“ Decker ! ” he shouted, and with a desperate effort he 
freed both arms and flung them wildly upwards, as a 
drowning man in the sea. 

Then the foundations of the earth seemed to give way, 
and he was carried down, down, into the lower darkness of 
the night, as if the wind had taken him into its arms to dash 
him headlong into eternity. 

A sudden obstruction impeded their flight. All was still 
again, except the dull moaning of the storm as it swept 
down the valley in a chill whirl of death, the snow follow- 
ing silently in its wake, to cover-up and hide the horrors of 
Nature’s grim and ruthless invasion. 


CHAPTER lY. 

“faces in the fiee.” 

The snow fell steadily upon Marylebone, upon Miss 
Weaver’s Retreat in the great thoroughfare of the borough, 
and upon the business premises of Brayford & Co., Circu- 
larizers and Advertising Agents, in the once famous High 


236 


CRUEL LONDON. 


Street of this division of the great city. But it melted 
nearly as quickly as it fell, converting the roads into soft, 
black mud, and making the pavements wet and greasy, as 
if the snow had been soot instead of white rain. 

It was Christmas Day. The shops were closed, with 
the exception of the fruiterers and the confectioners, which 
were patronized chiefly by shivering children, who ran to 
and fro with oranges and nuts, to the envy of other' little 
ones, who, tucking their red arms underneath their gray 
pinafores, planted themselves in front of the tempting 
stores, and reckoned up what they hoped to buy on Boxing 
Day. Beneath the several archways of the locality a few 
men, some of them in their Sunday clothes, stood smoking 
in groups, now and then stamping their feet for warmth. 
Tlie two or three bells in the adjacent church played a 
dirge-like invitation to prayer. In the stables of a local 
inn, an eccentric chanticleer persisted in continuing his 
somewhat tardy proclamations of the morn, as if he were 
anxious to make up for the lateness of his announcement 
by the vigor of his salutations. If you had listened to him, 
you would have been able to picture him in your mind, 
strutting back into his stable every now and then to shake 
his feathers free from the clammy snow, and returning to 
his duty with renewed determination. A dirty mist settled 
down upon each end of the street, and through it, in a. 
hoarse kind of tintinabulary whisper, came the sound of 
distant bells chiming and ringing, but the local “ Bang-bang- 
bang ” of the Marylebone bells sat heavily upon all com- 
petitors except chanticleer, who deliberately waited to get 
in his cry between the pauses of the dull but emphatic call 
to prayers. The air was ‘raw and dirty, for the smoke of 
the locality was more or less mixed up in the sluggish cur- 
rent of it that oscillated between the banks of mist that 
shut in the street, which was once the principal part of the 
village of Marylebone, with its Royal Palace, where Christ- 
mas had been wont to come hale and hearty with merry- 
making and wassail. 

Almost in the centre of the street, over the back prem- 
ises of Moses Aaron’s Emporium of Antiquities and China, 
Mr. Harry Brayford had established himself in his new and 
somewhat mysterious line of business. To Mr. Aaron’s 
emporium there were two entrances, one in front, another 
at the side, which a neighboring furniture-broker had 
Squeezed into the smallest possible dimensions. Mosea 


CRUEL LONDON. 


237 


AarQTi, through the interposition of his wife, had consented 
to the side entrance being partially given up to Mr. Bray- 
ford, who was described upon the door in jvhite letters as 
“Brayford & Co., Circularizers and Advertising Agents — 
Ring the bell on the right.” If you had rung that particular 
bell, and been admitted into the narrow passage on this 
Christmas Day of our history, you might have been a specta- 
tor of an interesting scene. You w'ould have been received 
by a tidy little Jewish girl, who would have shown you a set 
of white teeth, and said, “ Yes. .sir, Mr. Brayford is in, but 
he’s just going to have his dinner. Second floor, first 
turn on the right.” You would have threaded your way 
through passages of antiquities and china, and past rooms 
choked with furniture, suits of armor, stuffed birds, old 
oak chests, oil paintings hung awry, and ancient swords 
leaning for support against matchlocks from the battle of 
Worcester, and battle-axes which had been wielded by Nor- 
man knights. Then you would have come to a blank space 
on the wall, with the direction, “ Brayford & Co. — First 
door on the left.” Here you would have wiped your boots 
on a cocoa-nut mat, and knocked at a knocker with a 
demon’s head in bronze and wings of flaming brass, which 
bore evidence of daily polishing. Mr. Brayford was never 
tired of telling a certain infant, that would coo and laugh 
at him without understanding a word he said, all about tliis 
knocker. It had been on the chapter-house door of a 
famous cathedral, and every time it heard the clock strike 
twelve it had flapped its wings and raised the knocker 
itself. On this occasion you would have lifted the brazen 
knocker yourself, and, in response to your summons, a 
cheery voice would have said, “ Come in, if you’re fat ; if 
you’re lean you’ll do for the cat.” Mr. Brayford was 
always ransacking his memory for some childish saying of 
his old days to please one or the other of his two children, 
as he called little Willie and the Wonner. 

If you had elected to accept Mr. Brayford’s nursery 
challenge on this Christmas Day, trusting to the plumpness 
of your anatomy, you would have seen a curious picture of 
London life. Mr. H. Brayford, in a faded velvet coat and 
pink slippers, was sitting at the head of a square table, 
playing tlie host to three other persons. Opposite to Idrn, 
and with her back to a red glowing fire, was Mrs. Gardner, 
in a dark merino dress, with a white collar round her 
throat, her hair gathered up into a massive plait behind. 




CRUEL LONDON. 


Occii])ying another side of tlie table was little Willie, 
propped up in a high child’s chair, and facing the 
Woniier, whose vacant eyes were fixed upon the Cliristmas 
pudding wliicdi his honored though eccentric chief was 
about to carve. 

“Second act, Mrs. Gardner,” said Bray ford ; “that’s 
what I call it, and a good act too ; act thi’ee will be dessert 
and snapdragon. Do you have snapdragon in America?” 

The liost did not wait for an answer, but he handed a 
slice of pudding to the Wonner. 

“For the lady, sir, for the lady,” said the host, where- 
upon the Wonner blinked and smiled, and shuflied the 
])late in front of Mrs. Gardner. 

“That’s it,” said Brayford ; “ladies first, always, Mr. 
W., tlien the infants.” 

He cut up a slice into several pieces, and handed it to 
little Willie, who attacked it at once with a real silver 
spoon, lent for the purpose by Mrs. Aaron. 

“Christmas comes but once a year,” said Brayford, cut- 
ting another slice of pudding for the Wonner, “and when 
it comes it brings good cheer: roast beef and mince-pie, 
which nobody likes so well as I. There, Mr. W., bend 
your great mind upon that.” 

The Wonner looked at Mrs. Gardner, as much as to say, 
“Ain’t he a humorist?” And then; nodding in a friendly 
way to little Willie, he commenced to pay attention to the 
pudding. 

“ If the sauce is not strong enough, have a little brandy 
to it — neat — Mrs. Gardner. Do, now ; let me assist you.” 

“ No, thank you ; it is very good indeed,” replied Mrs. 
Gardner. 

“ Extraordinary world this, madam,” said Mr. Bray- 
ford, “is it not ? Here is Mrs. Moses Aaron, who is a 
Jewess — Sarah Aaron is her name, Jerusalem is her nation, 
London is her dwelling-place, antiquities her vocation ; and 
yet here she makes us a Christian plum-pudding on the day 
that we malign her race, and she put in the raisins and the 
lemon-peel as religiously as if she’d been brought up with 
a silver cross in her mouth, and had never heard of Judas 
Iscariot or Pontius his Pilate. Ah, Mrs. Gardner, we 
never know what the heart is by the religion it professes ! 
I declare if I had a proper nose for the })art I’d leave the 
Church and become a Jew. I’m in love with the whole 
fraternity.” 


CRUEL LONDON. 


239 


Mrs. Gardner smiled, and by a look directed Mr. Bray- 
ford’s attention to little Willie, who, as was his wont to- 
wards the conclusion of dinner, had leaned back in his 
chair and fallen asleep. 

“ ‘ Tired nature’s sweet restorer,”’ said Brayford, de- 
precating with his raised finger any other interference with 
the child but his own. “ lie, like the world, his ready visit 
pays where pudding paves the way.” 

Tiien he lifted little Willie carefully out of his chair, and 
lianded him over to Mrs. Gardner, who carried the child 
into an adjacent room, and presently returned ; while Mrs. 
Aaron herself came in, removed the pudding, and placed 
upon the table a decanter of port wine, a flask of brandy, 
:i dish of almonds and raisins, and a plate of sliced oranges. 

“ Thank you, Mrs. Aaron ; you are the kindest woman 
in the world,” said Brayford. 

“Not a bit of it,” said the woman, “there’s many as is 
kinder.” 

“ To think that there should be persons calling them- 
selves Christians who look down upon Jews ! Why, these 
Aarons, bless you, have plenty of money. Mrs. A. has no 
need to wait on us, but she does it, I believe, out of pure 
kindness,” said the host, as Mrs. Aaron left the room, 
which she did as humbly as if she lived by letting the back 
premises, for far less than they were worth, to her husband 
as^warehouses. 

“ She is very good,” said Mrs. Gardner 

“ And all because I was kind, she says, to her boy, who 
is dead ; not that I knew him when living, but I built his 
last resting-place, and I sat and comforted the poor old lady 
on the day of the funeral, and felt sorry to see her grieving, 
and I wrote her a neat epitaph on my own principle, which 
1 have explained before, only I did this in real earnest ; and 
that’s how I came to have such comfortable premises for my 
new business, and there is no end to the dear soul’s grati- 
tude. She has come to regard me at last as an old friend 
of her boy, though my only acquaintance with him was 
through his coffin-plate and his gravestone.” 

The Wonner nodded and laughed. 

“That’s right, Mr. W., enjoy yourself. Capital joke, 
wasn’t it ?” 

Mr. W. leaned back in his chair, with an orange in one 
hand and an almond in the other, and chuckled immensely. 


240 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“ It doesn’t matter to have a vacant head if your heart’s 
all right— eh, Mr. W. ? ” 

“ He is so clever,” said Mr. W. to himself, and laying 
down his almonds and orange to rub his hands. 

“Now, Mrs, Gardner, one glass of port, madam, and I 
am going to give you a toast ; fill your glass, Mr. W.” 

“ So very clever,” said Mr. W., pushing his glass towards 
Mr. Brayford. 

“A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to loved 
ones away and those who are here,” said Brayford ; “ more 
particularly referring, Mrs. Gardner, to Mr. John Kerman 
and to Mr. Tristram Decker, and to us four — yourself, and 
little Willie, and Brayford & Co.” 

Then, as Mr. Brayford raised his glass to his lips, Mr. 
W. drank. 

“Fancy the Wonner for a Company. Doesn’t it amuse 
you, madam? I often laugh at the idea of it when I’m 
making out a bill — “ To forty thousand at one shilling a 
thousand, two pounds ; ” or, replying to an application — 
“ Please quote price for thirteen insertions, enclosed adver- 
tisement, Brayford & Co.” 

Mr. Brayford prided himself on being the inventor of 
what he called professional circularization. When Monolith 
Cottage and its business association came to an end, Mr. 
Brayford’s 2:)rincipal trouble was the Wonner, and how 
that gentle imbecile was to live. The old pensioner had 
been in the habit of addressing circulars to the families of 
all the parties mentioned in the obituary advertisements of 
a morning paper, and the only established idea in the 
Wonner’s mind was the absolute necessity to the world at 
large that he should continue in this occupation. When 
for a few days he was compelled to leave it off, he la- 
bored under the belief that Brayford was playing some 
practical joke upon him. The first day he ])retended to 
enjoy it, the second day he resented it, and the third he 
broke into lamentations. Brayford having no use for Mr. 
W.’s labors in the old direction, conceived the idea of 
addressing other people’s circulars, and thus sprang up a 
business which now provides many a humble home with food. 
Companies’ prospectuses, tradesmen’s circulars, pamphlets, 
all kinds of announcements, are folded, addressed, ancT* 
stamped at so much per thousand, and Mr. Brayford’s first 
ten shillings, after his downfall, were earned by himself and 
his ancient clerk from a city printer. Mr. W., however. 


CRUEL LONDON. 


241 


still continued to address fifty envelopes per day from the 
obituary advertisements, which, after some trouble, Mr. 
Bray ford had induced a once rival firm of mural masons to 
accept at a very low, though remunerative fiojure. It was 
while he was in search of Mr. Fitzherbert Robinson, in the 
hope of obtaining orders to address his company prospec- 
tuses, that Mr. Brayford had come to the rescue of Mrs. 
Gardner and her child, whom he had brought to Mrs. 
Aaron, not, however, without some resistance on the part 
of the fugitive. When Mrs. Gardner had told her story 
to Mrs. Aaron, that childless old lady offered her a room, 
and with the business instinct of her race had remarked 
“ there need be no obligation, for if the young woman can 
write a good hand, she may earn her living by addressing 
envelopes for Mr. Brayford ; ” and so it had come to pass 
that Mrs. Gardner and her child were inmates of the Em- 
porium, the fugitive accepting the position of an assistant in 
the circularization department of the firm of Brayford 
& Co. who had recently added to their other responsibili- 
ties the business of an advertising agency, as notified in 
a leading journal — “ Brayford & Co., High Street, Mary- 
lebone, insert advertisements and enter into contracts for 
the same in all English newspapers; estimates given.” 
Ho had demonstrated to Mr. Moses Aaron the advantages 
of advertising,' Ijy creating a run on cheap stuffed birds, 
through an announcement he had drawn up, with a poetic 
quotation in the middle of it and a surprising climax at 
the close, the spirit of which he presented “ free, gratis, 
and for nothing,” to professional dramatists. One of the 
Footlighters, who had been many times indebted to Bray- 
ford for a dinner, identified the address of Brayford & 
Co. and Moses Aaron, and in a so-called satirical jour- 
nal, which was not entitled Black Mail., he congratulated 
Mr. Aaron upon the possession of a poet whose poverty, 
he heard, was sufficiently keen to qualify him for the 
divine afflatus said to come best to an empty stomach. 
The men who were under obligations to Brayford re- 
venged themselves upon him most thoroughly ; but as the 
author of the three-act epitaph rarely saw them, or the 
elegant and refined journals under whose shadows they 
picked something more than holes in honest reputations, 
they did not much disturb the peace of mind of their 
former patron. Mr. Brayford was quite happy. He 
earned just enough to enable him to live, and give food and 


242 


CRUEL LONDON. 


freedom to Mrs. Gardner and little VTillie. These ad- 
ditional moiitlis to feed had not only broiiglit him incrensed 
business, but Mrs. Gardner’s history was to him a source 
of never-ending romance. lie had discovered Mrs. Gard- 
ner’s husband or betrayer in Tom Sleaford ; he had 
sliown her the corner house in Fitzroy Square ; lie liad 
shown lier Emily Sleaford’s villa in St. John’s Wood; he 
had shown her the West End Bank of Deposit in Baker 
Street; he had told her their histories; and, on this 
Clii-istrnas Day, while Tristram Decker and John Kerman 
were in peril between the demon Gold and the despot 
Winter, Harry Brayford had strange news to communi- 
cate to Ml’S. Gardner, of esjiccial interest to one if not 
both of these men whom wo have just left at the mercy of 
the storm. 

“ You said you were going to church, Mr. W.,” re- 
marked Brayford, when the wliite-haired clerk had signi- 
fied that he had finished dining; “no snapdragon until 
after tea, when little Willie’s awake.” 

Mr. W. chuckled and rose to his feet. “ Yes, yes,” he 
said, nodding, “ alw.ays church at Christmas. He is so 
clever, so very clever.” 

“ Come straight back,” said Brayford. 

“ Yes, straiglit as I can ; yes, yes,” replied Mr. W. 

“Straight as you can? why, you’ve nof had much port, 
you dear old sinner,” said Brayford. “ Straight as you 
can! I’ll talk to you! There was an old gent of London, 
he thought his peace it was undone, so he went off to 
church, left his friend in the lurch, and said that was the 
fashion of London.” 

“ Very good,” said Mr. W., “clever and good, and so 
say all of us. Amen ;” with which remark Mr. W. took a 
cloak and staff from a peg behind the door, and trotted out 
of the room. 

“Now, Mrs. Gardner, you still promise to be guided 
by me, don’t you ? ” 

“ Yes, Mr. Brayford, you are as wise as you are kind.” 

“No, don’t say that ; rather that I am not quite such a 
fool as I look ; I won’t pretend to go beyond that.” 

“ I can never thank you enough for all you have done 
for me.” 

“ Don’t thank me ; I don’t deserve it ; I have done 
nothing ; but I want to tell you that I have come to the 
conclusion you were not married in London. None of the 


CRUEL LONDON. 




registry offices we have found are at all like the one you 
remember, and I have got it riglit fast in my mind that he 
never brought you to town, lie knew you were a stran- 
ger, and, either for the purpose of duping you, or for what 
reason it doesn’t matter now, he has taken you to Bristol, 
Birmingham, Sheffield, Manchester, or some large city, and 
called it London. What do you think of that idea? ” 

“ In a misty kind of fashion that thought has come into 
my head more than once.” 

“We are on the right track then at last,” said Brayford, 
quickly. “ The shadow of that idea falling on your mind 
is enough to convince me. That’s settled. We will study 
the map, and visit the nearest large city. I don’t know 
how we shall do it, but it must be done.” 

Brayford stirred the fire, and asked Mrs. Gardner to 
turn her chair round upon the hearth. The two then sat 
before the fire, Brayford on his side, Mrs. Gardner on hers. 
The so-called “ gay dog,” who had written comic songs, 
and subscribed for an entire ballet company to have a 
Christmas dinner several years ago, was as respectful to the 
Southern woman as the humble subject of a queen might 
'have been to his sovereign ; and yet his homage was devoid 
of the ostentation of humility. Mrs. Gardner found him 
quite companionable. He exaggerated his age in order 
that not even the wildest thought of suspicion anentthe pro 
prieties should make her feel uncomfortable. He might 
have spared himself any trouble on that account, for his 
good, true heart shone straight through his face, and illu- 
minated all his conduct in Mrs. Gardner’s eyes. She would 
never go out alone. Mrs. Aaron had been her companion 
here and there, in little sliopping expeditions, but Mr. 
Bi*ayford had shown her London in its splendor and in its 
rags, in its kindliness and its cruelty. Ttiey had stood to- 
gether outside theatres on grand nights; they had seen 
Ylyde Park in the season ; they had been all through Mary- 
lebone Workhouse to look for an old man once in the em- 
ployment of Brayford, who had procured him a situation 
as sub-porter at a cemetery; they had wandered through 
St. Giles’s that they might see people worse off than them- 
selves ; they had stood opposite a large house in Baker 
Street, where Mrs. Gardner had clung to Brayford’s arm 
in terror when he sahl, “That’s his lather’s new swindle, 
the West-End Bank of Deposit; one day they will drag 
him out of that to gaol.” She could never be "^induced to 


244 


CRUEL LOiYDOiV. 


go into tlie Marylebone Road if she knew it. Her only 
fear in life was that Miss Weaver might have her seized 
and locked up, more especially as the police had issued a 
notice offering a reward for her discovery, in order to com- 
plete the prosecution of Irish Moll. Brayford told her that 
this official interest in her would soon be at an end, and he 
illustrated .his views by stories of murders which had ex- 
cited London for a week or two, to be utterly forgotten 
for some new sensation. “ London doesn’t remember any- 
thing long, and it’s astonishing how few murders they ever 
find out,” he said. Bnt Mrs. Gardner was firm in her fear 
of “ The Retreat,” and in her resolve never to go outside 
High Street alone, or allow little Willie to go beyond her 
immediate sight. 

The winter twilight fell dark and dirty upon the back 
wdndows of the Emporium as Brayford and Mrs. Gardner 
sat talking by the fire. 

“I’ve heard,” said Brayford, “that Mr. Sleaford, alias 
Gardner, is visiting at Manor Farm, in the Marsh, Lin- 
colnshire, and that Miss Crosby is at last likely to marry 
him. That makes me think the certificate you saw was a 
forgery.” 

“ Oh, don’t say that, for Willie’s sake ! ” exclaimed 
the woman. “No, no, it’s not true.” 

“Perhaps not. Don’t let my bungling fancies upset 
you, my dear madam. What I wanted to say is this: 
supposing that he should be about to marry Miss Crosby, 
it is our place to stop him. I had no idea he was in Eng- 
land, and I expect he has only just returned from the Con- 
tinent, though I did think I saw him in Baker Street last 
week. I suppose there is no city in the world where peo- 
ple-can be so thoroughly lost as in London, and tlie nearer 
you are to those who may be looking for you, the further 
you are off. Here you are under the very nose of Miss 
Weaver, close to Robinson’s house, a stone’s throw from 
the West-End Bank,, and you are practically as far away as 
if you were on the other side of the Channel.” 

Mrs. Gardner was staring intently into the fire. 

“ She is in one of her dreaming fits,” said Brayford tc 
himself. “I had better go on talking, and not notice it.” 

“ Do you ever see faces in the fire ? ” she asked. 

“ Well, no ; I can’t say that I do.” 

“ Oh Mr. Brayford,” she said, “ I am sure that some- 


CRUEL LONDON. 


245 


thing seriously affecting his life and mine is taking place 
while we sit here. I can see his face even while I speak.” 

She sighed deeply as she gazed into the glowing em- 
bers. 

“ Hark ! ” she exclaimed, in an earnest whisper, raising 
her hands, and bending her head to listen. “ Did you hear 
nothing ? ” 

“ Well, no, my dear child, no,” said Brayford. 

“ Didn’t you hear that ? ” 

“No, I really can’t say I did.” 

“Not a voice saying ‘Caroline, Caroline’?” she 
asked, rising to her feet. 

“No, my poor child, no. Calm yourself; it is your 
fancy; you have had so much trouble, you see ; you fancy 
these things.” 

“ What will he say when he comes ? ” she asked, speak- 
ing more to herself than to Brayford, “ when he comes and 
finds me? He will come, and my wicked heart longs for 
him. Oh, Christ, have mercy on one of Thy most miser- 
able creatures ! ” 

“We will light the candles,” said Brayford, “ and have 
tea. Mr. W. will be here, and we are going to have sna2> 
dragon.” 

He bustled about, lighted two candles, and commenced 
to clear aw^ay the remains of the Christmas dessert, calling 
Mrs. Aaron to his assistance. 

“Mrs. Gardner is not quite well,” he said. “If you 
could persuade her to go downstairs and have a nice chat 
with you, I think it would do her good.” 

Mrs. Aaron, taking the hint with kindly promptitude, 
went up to her lodger, and, putting a motherly arm about 
her, said, “ Come and take tea with me, Mrs. Gardner. 
I’ve got a fresh lot of old china and some curious old 
finger-rings just come in. I’d like to show them to you. 
Won’t you come ? ” 

“ I’ll look after Master Willie,” said Brayford. “ Go 
with Mrs. Aaron ; a little change will do you good, and 
when the snapdragon’s ready, and I and Mr. W. have 
brewed the elderberry wine punch, Mr. W. shall run down 
and tell you.” 

Mrs. Gardner leaned her head upon the good woman’s 
shoulder, and suffered herself to be led away. 


246 


CRUEL LONDON, 


CHAPTER y. 

BETWEEN THE LIGHTS. 

It was a singular, not to say picturesque, group that was 
gathered round the table in Mr. Harry Brayford’s room to 
engage in the harmless delights of snapdragon. First there 
was the host himself in his faded velvet jacket, and with 
his mild, benevolent face half hidden in brown beard and 
whiskers, not untinged with gray. He sat at the head of 
the table, with Mrs. Gardner on his right hand ^nd little 
Willie on his left. Mr. Gardner looked like an Oriental. 
She wore a double row of Turkish coins round her neck, a 
Christmas present made to her an hour previously by Mrs. 
Aaron, who sat opposite to Mr. Bray ford in a still moire 
silk dress, adorned with a brooch of rubies and -diamonds. 
Round her neck she wore a jet chain with jewelled clasps. 
She was a fat, dark, genial-looking woman, and in her con- 
versational efforts she continually appealed to her husband 
Moses, a,n aesthetic-looking Jew, with long features and 
sunken eyes, and in other respects quite the figure to realize 
an artists’ idea of some ancient Rabbi. Between these 
two notable examples of the chosen people sat Mr. W. or the 
Wonner, in a black threadbare coat, a yellow waistcoat, 
blue and white neckerchief folded many times round his 
neck. His white hair straggled about his ears, and an 
expression of gentle resignation filled his pleasant face. 
His eyes were continually bent on his master with a look of 
envious admiration. Little Willie, in a white frock and a 
red sash, sat up in a tall chair and crowed his first words to 
his heart’s deliglit and to the gratification of the whole 
company, who were assembled rather to amuse him than to 
please themselves. 

The apartment, which served Mr. Brayford for counting- 
house, manufactory, and dining and drawing-room, was 
equally characteristic of his new business, and that of the 
art trade of Mr. Moses Aaron. On an ancient desk, which 
two hundred years before had occupied a niche in the 
ministerial chamber of a Dutcli statesman, were arranged 
the Post-OSice Directories of London and the Home Coun- 


CRUEL LONDON-. 


247 


ties, from which Mr. Brayford and his staff directed their 
envelopes and wrappers, wliieli the founder of circularization 
often explained to Mrs. Gardner found their way into all 
corners of the empire, ranging from the cottage to the 
])alace, from Marylebone to Windsor. Upon the walls 
hung a set of old family pictures, purchased at a sale of 
ducal treasures in the North of Englard. Interspersed 
among them were a modern newspaper map, a postal chart, 
and a couple of playbill reminiscences' of Mr. Brayford’s 
days of influence and prosperity. You might have looked 
for some token of the cemetery business, but you would 
not have found it, not even a sprig of yew among the 
holly and miseletoe which here and there decorated the 
picture-frames, and shone out bright and gay upon the 
mantelshelf. 

One side of the room was filled with a carved oak book- 
case, black with age. The shelves were partially filled with 
])ackets of prospectuses of the Lightning Utilizer and Safety 
Thunderbolt Company, Limited ; notices of removal of 
Badem & Co., silk mercers; and the Soup and Chowder 
Association’s pamphlets of the Anglo-American Providers 
Socie.ty ; all of which were in course of postal manipulation 
by Brayford & Co. when the Christmas holidays were pro- 
claimed to be in force by the patentee of the exploded 
iiire<e-act epitaph and the inventor of the living and pros- 
perous system of circularization and cheap advertising. On 
the mantelshelf was a round mirror of considerable antiquity. 
In a corner near the fireplace stood a Venetian image of 
Shakespeare’s Moor of Venice, which, having been exposed 
for twenty years in the Emporium window without eliciting 
a single inquiry, had been brought, upstairs out of the way. 
The chairs were a miscellanious assortment of carved oak 
and modern Windsor, and on the floor was a much-used 
Turkey carpet ; Avhile the fire on the hearth fell hot and 
glowing upon a brass fender, before which the Duchess of 
Metheringhem had often toasted her dainty toes, for Mr. 
Aaron had bought it from her maid when the duchess re- 
furnished her boudoir in modern satin-wood and silver. 

When, therefore, the light of the candles was extin- 
guished and a match ignited the great dish of spirits and 
raisins, the scene was full of curious effects of light and 
shade. The faces round the table had a weird look. The 
laughter of little Willie and the chuckle of Mr. W. sounded 
the extreme notes of childhood. Between the lights every 


248 


CRUEL LONDON. 


now and then Othello seemed to look out from his corner ; 
strange evidence of unsuspected figures behind the varnish 
were seen in the old pictures on the wall ; the mirror on 
the mantelshelf flashed, in its depths of transparency, flames 
of blue and red. Is it for weal or woe that we see only the 
glimpses of the future that come to us through the gropings 
of our imagination in the darkness that separates to-day 
and to-morrow ? Sometimes it seems as if heaven hesitated, 
and halted upon the thought whether it will not compro- 
mise matters by at least letting full daylight into the pres- 
ent, by bridging over with a second sight the wide expanse 
of sea and land between those who are dear to each other. 
In the case of Caroline Virginia Denton and Tristram 
Decker it is certain that, however imperfect the communi- 
cation might be, there was between the two a bond of sym- 
pathy of sufficient electrical strength to thrill both hearts 
in moments of fear or danger, and that both organizations 
were sufficiently sensitive for the imagination to paint 
weird semblances of each other upon the uncorporeal air. 
In the lurid light of the Christmas dish, Mrs. Gardner again 
saw the face of Tristram Decker looking at her pale and wan ; 
but her gratitude for the kindness which she had recently 
experienced made her exercise a powerful effort of will 
over an almost uncontrollable desire to manifest emotion at 
the ghostly sight. She clutched her chair with her hands ; 
she pressed her feet upon the floor, and sat still until the 
vision faded out ; and then she forced herself into an acted 
appearance of sympathy with the pleasures of the time. 
Mr. Brayford was full of humorous quips. Mr. W. con- 
tinually chuckled his private opinion of his chief’s clever- 
ness. Mrs. Aaron thought of her dear boy, to whom Mr, 
Brayford had been such a loving friend ; for she had come 
at last to convince herself that her lodger had known him 
since his babyhood. Mr. Moses Aaron screwed a smile out 
of his long, solemn features, and little Willie fairly screamed 
with childish delight. 

No spiritual, clectro-biological, or other manifestation 
indicated to Mrs. Gardner the continued existence of the 
late master of The Cottage at Essam ; nor, for that matter, 
did her sensitive nature indicate the character of the perils 
with which Tristram Decker was struggling in the snow- 
blocked mountains of the Sacramento. It is for the his- 
torian whose facts are arranged under his hands to carry 
the reader from one scene to another irrespective of all ob- 


CRUEL LONDON. 


210 

Stacies of time and place. Manor Farm was gay and b'liglit 
on this Christmas Day of our history : Manor Farm had 
been twice to church ; Manor Farm had helped to decorate 
the old house of God with laurel and with holly ; and 
Manor Farm had brought home, after evening service, th'e 
parson and his wife and sundry other neighbors to speno 
the evening. The house was lighted up from kitchen to 
attic. A mistletoe, or “ kissing bush,” hung in the hall, dec- 
orated with ribbons and rosettes. There were blazing 
tires in the dining-room on one side of this spacious entrance 
way, and in the drawing-room on the other. A cold round 
of beef, a stuffed chine, a mighty cheese, two enormous 
pork-pies, and several dishes of plum-pudding and mince- 
pies filled the dining-table. The guests “ helped themselves” 
when they pleased. On the sideboard were jorums of ale 
and decanters of port and sherry. Zancher Brown and 
Elijah Ward helped themselves continually under the di- 
rection of Mrs. Kester ; while in the drawing-room, which 
had been given up to “ a hand at cards,” Mr. Amos Frith, 
James Johnson, Luke Giles, Mrs. Frith, and Mrs. Brown 
moistened their lips with hot posset, which old Goff handed 
round at every possible opportunity. Goff and Kester 
were as happy as they could be — happier, indeed, than Goff 
had ever dreamed to be possible ; for, stimulated by the 
prospective engagement of Jane Crosby to Tom Sleaford, 
they had arranged with themselves to be man and wife al- 
so. Mrs Kester, when she accepted Goff, had said there 
were no fools like old fools, though she told Goff the change 
in their condition would, after all, only add to her exercise 
of authority, the right to order him about, which she had 
done for years without that right ; and Goff had replied 
that he should obey her only the more cheerfully when she 
had obtained her power legally at the altar, for Goff no 
more dreamed of contradicting Mrs. Kester than he would 
have done if she had drunk at the well of St. Keene, or, 
like Southey’s heroine, had secured her power by taking, a 
bottle to church. 

The rubicund parson and his comfortable wife sat quietly 
in the dining-room before the fire talking to Jane Crosby, 
while the music and clatter of dancing came through the 
open doorways from the kitchen, which had been cleaned 
and decorated for this merry festival. A mighty log, packed 
with smaller ones, burned brightly on the hearth ; sconces, 
with “ Christmas candles,” were fixed upon the walls; the 


250 


CRUEL LONDON. 


hams and other stores had been removed from the ceiling 
beams, which were festooned with greenery ; refreshments 
were set out on the dresser ; old Shep lay curled up in the 
furthest corner of the ingle-nook at the feet of two old 
people, man and wife, who sat there thinking of the days 
Avhen they could “foot it with the best of them.” 

The parson and his cheery spouse meanwhile were talk- 
ing to Miss Crosby of the necessity of making up her mind 
to give a master to the Manor Farm estate, and more espe- 
cially to let that gentleman be Mr. Tom Sleaford, who, 
during the last few months of his visiting in the neighbor- 
hood, had made friends on all sides. 

Mr. Tom, it appeared from this conversation, had been 
staying at the George Hotel, Burgh, ever since he came 
down to the shooting in September, and it was well known 
why lie lingered. Miss Crosby admitted that the young 
man had twice proposed to her, and that she feared she 
would be obliged to marry him at last, if not for herself, at 
least for his friends, who all seemed to be intervening in his 
behalf. The reverend incumbent of the parish said he 
understood that the Sleafords were an old Lincolnshire 
family, and he had himself deposited half his savings in the 
excellent London bank of which Mr. Tom Sleaford’s father 
was the manager. 

While they were talking, Tom Sleaford, fanning his face 
with his hankerchief, came walking into the room. 

“ Ah, here you are. Miss Crosby. I declare they have 
danced me almost off my legs. How do you do, sir, and 
madam ? ” 

Mr. Tom Sleaford bowed to the parson and his wife, 
who both rose and shook hands with him, paying court to 
the future owner of Manor Farm pew. 

“Where is Mr. Thompson?” asked Jane. “Is he 
dancing with Mrs. Kester ? ” 

“ Well, no ; but he has been delighting everybody with 
his elegant stej)s in a polka with Miss Brown, and I left 
him in the midst of Sir Roger de Coverley.” 

Then Tom took the parson aside, and, with an apology 
to the two ladies, whispered in his ear; then the incumbent 
raised his hands with joyful surprise ; then Tom said he 
must return or his partner would never forgive him, and 
that he claimed Miss Crosby’s hand for the next dance; and 
as he left the room the reverend incunibent said he hoped 
Miss Crosby would give it him for life, and that he rejoiced 


CRUEL LONDON. 


2:»t 

to learn, even in a whisper, that it was possible Mr. Slea- 
ford might give him authority to put up the banns next 
Sunday. 

Miss Crosby received this sally with a smile and an un- 
certain shrug of her handsome shoulders. Then she begged 
them to excuse her for a moment, and slie quietly sought 
her own room, locked the door beliind lier, and sat down 
to think. But her head w!is in a whirl, and she went 
downstairs again as quickly as she had gone up, returning to 
the active business of her duties as hostess. She walked about 
among her guests, from drawingroom to dinning-room, 
card-tables to the dancing, a happy, wliolesome picture of 
English beauty. She wore a gray silk dress, with white lace 
rutiles round her neck, sleeves that fitted tightly her well- 
shaped arms, and a bodice that showed the graceful con- 
tour of her rounded bust. Her brown wavy hair was 
plainly dressed ; and her fair face, with its eloquent eyes 
and full rich lips, never looked more beautiful than in the 
homely, hospitable setting of Manor Farm. She had heard 
nothing of John Kerman since his sudden disappearance ; 
but she felt sure he would return some day to atone for 
the past ; and yet, with all her apparent strength of charac- 
ter, she had gradually allowed her feelings to be over- 
shadowed by the persistent attentions of Tom Sleaford, 
who had laid himself out with all his arts to capture her. 
Woman is indeed a strange compound ! One would have 
thought that the lady who had carried through that bold 
scheme of betting and edging and laying the correct odds 
for the financial salvation of Mr. Kerman could have held 
her own in any undertaking and in any situation. It must 
not, however, be forgotten that Jane had after all only 
carried out a plan which had been designed and shaped by 
Mr. Jabez Thompson, one of the keenest sporting lawyers 
in the Midland Counties. Mr. Tom Sleaford had no doubt 
been able to obtain a new footing in Miss Crosby’s considera- 
tion through the knowledge that his sister Patty Avas 
deeply in love with Kerman. This was another unexpected 
trait in that young lady’s character. Although she still 
maintained her usual composure of manner, and devoted 
herself to pink sunsets and rosy-tinted water-colors gen- 
erally, she declined to marry Mr. Roper, Avhom she calm- 
ly informed that she loved Squire Kerman, and meant to 
marry him Avhen he returned. Every possible influence, 
paternal, maternal and fraternal, had been brought to bear up- 


CRUEL LONDON. 


on tliis apparently neutral-tinted young lady, but she adhered 
to this declaration just as firmly as she devoted herself to a 
particular class of ‘landscape, in which the sun was con- 
tinually setting, and the fields were always bathed in hues 
of pinky red. The £10,000 would take no harm, she said, 
lying at interest, and Mr. Tavener had supported her in 
this declaration, as he had also in her endorsement of the 
judgment of the trustees, in declining to allow the money 
to be removed to the cofers of the West London Bank 
of Deposit, to the secret, bitter, but unexpressed annoy- 
ance of Mr. Sleaford, who had, even in his preliminary 
calculations, counted upon the manipulation of John Ker- 
man’s romantic, gift. 

Jane Crosby sympathized with Patty Sleaford, and in 
her own generous way bad schooled herself to think that 
it was Kerman’s duty to marry her — a sentiment strongly 
in favor of the successful! wooing of Mr. Tom Sleaford. 
But beyond this was the astonishing fact that Tom had 
won over to his side the astute and clever Jabez Thompson. 
Tom’s remarkable shooting on the 1st September had laid 
in the foundation of his triumph in that direction. “ The 
fellow’s father may be a scamp,” though the sporting law- 
yer, “ but a young man who can handle a gun with perfect 
form must be a gentleman.” Tom had exercised in other 
ways thorough sportsman-like qualities, and had never 
missed an opportunity to play upon the generous nature 
of Jane’s trustee. But it was in the hunting season that 
•Tom Sleaford won the heart of Jabez Thompson. If he 
had distinguished himself in the stubbles of September, or 
on the adjacent coast when the woodcocks appeared, he 
had distanced all his previous successes in the hunting-field. 
A man who had a seat like Tom’s and could go across 
country as straight, required no other qualification for the 
position of a country gentleman. Instead of showing the 
cockney white feather in the sternest situations of a country 
life, Tom had evidenced an aptitude for it which had made 
him popular throughout the Marsh. If his country friends 
’could only have seen the real expression of Tom’s face 
when he was alone after a whole day of acted bonhomie., 
perhaps they would not even then have been disenchanted. 
They would probably have attributed the cruel, anxious, 
gambler’s look to fatigue. Tom Sleaford, alias Philip 
Gardner, had made up his mind to have Jane Crosby’s 
consent to put up the banns on this night of the Christmas 


CRUEL LONDON, 


253 


foast. He liad heard her say that if ever she were married 
she would have the banns put up in the good old-fashioned 
way, and Tom Sleaford made a point of jotting down in 
his memory, and thence at night into a memorandum-book, 
all her little expressed wishes or desires upon any kind of 
subject, so that he might impress her when he anticipated 
them, or acted upon them, or referred to them. He studied 
his game of wooing in every detail. He adapted himself 
to the Manor Farm surroundings with thoughtful care, 
studiously avoiding in tone or manner anything that could 
possibly savor of the London fop. Indeed, old Kester said. 
Mister Sleaford was born to be a Lincolnshire squire, and 
she was glad our Jane liked him at last ; for if ever a young 
man had persevered, that young man was Mr. Sleaford, 
junior, though she did not hold with his father, and nothing 
would ever make her hold with a person as never looked 
you in the face, or if he did, seemed to be making a hole 
through you with a corkscrew ; but a young man was not 
responsible for his father — he neither chose him nor made 
him ; and Mr. Tom Sleaford had no right to suffer because 
his father was shifty, and his mother as useless as a door 
with its hinges off. Old Goff would solemnly shake his 
sides with laughter at Kester’s smart sayings, and mentally 
clap himself on the back, to think that he had had the cour- 
age to propose to and also to win so remarkable, so wise, 
and so buxom a dame. He said he only hoped all married 
folk would be as happy as they, at which Mrs. Kester would 
say, “ Get away with thee, thou old softy^” and proceed 
with her work or her talk, whichever had been obstructed 
by the expressed indignation of her big, awkward, gray- 
headed companion, who had induced her to permit him to 
tie himself down to her apron-strings. 

When the gigs and carriages and market carts of the 
Marsh had carried home most of her guests, Tom Sleaford 
asked Jane Crosby to let him put up the banns. She had 
made a struggle at the thought of laying aside for ever her 
fond but foolish memories of John Kerman, and had at last 
replied, that if Mr. Jabez Thompson gave his consent, she 
would. Tom rushed out for Thompson, and sent the 
lawyer, trustee, and friend into the drawing-room, where 
Jane was standing by the fire alone. 

“ What is it, my child ? ” he asked. 

“ Am I to many Tom Sleaford ? ” 

“ I would if I were you,” replied Thompson, in the same 


254 


CRUEL LONDON. 


laconic style which always characterized Jane’s conversa- 
tion with her old friend. 

“You think he’s a good fellow? ” 

“ Yes ; as the world goes, capital.” 

“ If I accept him you will be satisfied ? ” 

“ Quite.” 

“ You don’t like his father? ” 

‘^JSTo ; I think he’s a thief.” 

“ That’s bad. You don’t think I ought to wait for — for 
Mr. Kerman?” 

“Wait! What to be jilted again? A fool who has 
neither eyes for beauty, love nor money.” 

“Don’t call him names.” 

“ Then don’t ask foolish questions.” 

“ You like me, Jabez Thompson ? ” 

“ So much that if I weren’t such a wizened old scare- 
crow, I’d have entered myself for the Manor Farm Stakes 
long ago.” 

“ Yes, you are aged,” said Jane, smiling ; “but what I 
mean is, you wouldn’t see me do anything you would think 
was a mistake ? ” 

“I wouldn’t.” 

“ And you would advise me to marry Tom Sleaford ? ” 
“You must marry somebody.” 

“MustI?” 

“Certainly! You’ve no right to leave this property 
without heirs.” 

“ Oh ! Did Uncle Martin say so.” 

“ His will as good as said so.” 

“ There was something wrong about that will ? ” 

“Yes.” 

“ What was it ? ” 

“ Old Sleaford tried to stick in Tom’s name instead of 
Jack’s.” 

“ Was that forgery? ” 

“ Hot exactly, and it wasn’t burglary, but it was dis- 
honest. However, that’s all past, and it's a secret.” 

“ And you think I ought to marry somebody ? ” 

“ Certainly.” 

“ Tom Sleaford rather than nobody? ” 

“ Tom Sleaford is a good match ; he hasn’t much money, 
but he’s a good-looking chap — rides straight across coun- 
try, likes country life, and is popular all about the place.” 

“ Will you draw up the settlements in such a way that 


CRUEL LONDON. 255 

part of the share of the estate which Uncle Martin intended 
him to have shall go to John Kerman.” 

“How much?” 

‘‘What jmu think fair and honest, and equal in generosity 
to his own behavior in relinquishing his claims.” 

“ Yes, certainly.” 

“ Please tell Mr. Sleaford that he shall have my answer 
to-morrow. I shall not see him again to-night. I am going 
to bed. That is my gig I think, coming round to the door 
now. Do you leave him to Burgh ? ” 

“Yes.” 

“ Good night, then.” 

She held out her hand. Mr. Jabez Thompson kissed it 
ceremoniously, and she left the room. 

“Ah, my dear” soliloquized the lawyer, looking after her 
as she closed the door, “ if I were only twenty years younger! ” 

While Jabez Thompson’s high-stepper “ Flyaway” was 
bounding along the hard, frost-bound road, over the "great, 
wide Lincolnshire marsli, making allowance for the dif- 
ference of time between this side of the Atlantic and the 
other, the man whom Tom Sleaford had begun to supplant 
in fame, and fortune was fighting for very life in Decker’s 
lonely Gulch, overlooking the wilderness of snow that had 
made the Sacramento valley a cemetery of the living and 
the dead. 


CHAPTER VI. 

A CHALLEN-GE UNEXPECTEDLY ANSWERED. 

That first Sunday after Christmas dawned calm and still 
upon Manor Farm and the Marsh, upon the gray old church, 
upon the adjacent homesteads, upon all the great wide 
plain, white with frost and snow, and bright with a cold 
winter sky. 

There was an unusual solemnity in the preparations for 
church-going that did not belong alone to the peculiar 
sacredness of the time, which received special signification 
in a choral service and the usual Christmas decorations. It 
had become known that tlie banns of marriage between Jani* 


256 


CRUEL LONDON. 


Crosby and Tom Sleaford were to be proclaimed, and at 
Manor Farm and adjacent homesteads the event was one of 
great interest. Even Mr. Amos Firth, Luke • Giles, and 
Zancher Brown dressed with extra care for church that 
morning, while Mrs. Brown declared that her three daugh- 
ters had done themselves up as if they were going to a wed- 
ding itself.” ElijahWard had put on his best beaver hat, the 
silky fur of which fluffed into downy waves under the in- 
fluence of the winter wind. The distance between Manor 
Farm and the church was but a few hundred yards, and the 
procession which wended its way from the farm to morning 
service was a picture of rural simplicity and repose. Miss 
^Crosby, in a long, warm cloak, with Mrs. Kester walking 
respectfully by her side, was followed by Goff and Kester 
Shaw in dark broadcloth coats and breeches, and the other 
male and female servants of the family, two and two, carry- 
ing their Prayer-Books in their hands, the gilt dges of some 
of the volumes flashing in the light, and the gay bits of 
color here and there in the women’s bonnets telling out 
against the wintry landscape. 

The Manor Farm people and their neighbors were well 
seated before curious and inquiring eyes peeped out through 
the open doors of high-backed pews at Mr. J abez Thompson 
and Mr. Tom Sleaford. Thompson, in his brown coat and 
brass buttons, his tight nankeen trousers, and his black and 
white spotted neckerchief, looked the keen sportsman he 
was. His ruddy face was shaven, his gray, short hair brushed 
close to his small round head, and his gold eyeglasses, with 
their black ribbon, sparkled on the lappets of his long old- 
i'ashioned vest. Tom Sleaford, with quiet, self-sustained 
ease, stepped into Mr. Thompson’s well-cushioned pew, and 
surveyed the church with a calm look of interest before 
]dacing his hat under the seat and kneeling for a moment in 
imitation of his friend and patron. 

While the antique organ was moaning out an old fashioned 
voluntary, under the manipulation of an old-fashioned op- 
erator, the congregation composed itself for the work of the 
morning’s devotional exercises. Among the latest arrivals 
were two persons wlio came in a hired conveyance from 
Burgh. The organ was still stirring the dull soddened echoes 
of the church as Mr. Bray ford handed out Mrs. Gardner, who 
had for the first time since her child’s birth been prevailed 
upon to leave little Willie in the care of a third person. 
Mrs. Aaron would have taken it as a personal affront if sh6 


CRUEL LONDON. 


257 


had not done so, just as her solemn-visaged husband would 
have resented it as a deadly insult if Mr. Brayford had de- 
clined to accept from him the loan of a twenty-pound note 
to see him through his expedition to Lincolnshire “in the 
interests of British liberty and justice, to say nothing of 
honor, love, and truth.” 

“ Wait one moment before we enter,’* said Mrs. Gardner. 
“ I feel so nervous ; my heart beats as if it would burst.” 

“Lean on my arm ; I will support you, my child,” said 
Brayford, encouragingly. “ Don’t be afraid ; no harm shall 
come to you. You shall see whether an Englishman, how- 
ever depraved, will be allowed to commit crime upon crime 
with impunity.” 

“ Thank you ; I shall be better presently,” she said. 

“ They will let you put up your horse at the farm,” 
Brayford said to the driver.of the “ covered car” which had 
brought them from Burgh ; “ we shall want you to take us 
back after the service.” 

The man got up into his seat, and urged his clumsy 
horse into the roadway as Brayford and his trembling 
charge disappeared in the shadow of the porch to emerge 
on the other side just as the opening words of the service 
brought the congregation to their feet. Brayford entered 
a half-empty pew among those of the humbler worshippers. 
He led the woman in and placed a hassock for her, upon which 
she knelt, burying her face in her hands. She prayed in 
earnest silence for strength and guidance. Brayford whis- 
pered to her, “ Kneel as long as you wish ; don’t mind the 
service ; have no fear; God will give us strength for our 
work ; it is He who hath brough us here, that truth and 
virtue may not be ashamed.”, Brayford said this in further 
re-assurance of the woman’s conduct ; for she had resisted 
his advice, and at last would have been content withimak- 
ing a private communication to Miss Crosby ; but Mr. 
Brayford would be satisfied with nothing . short of a full 
and complete exposure of Tom Sleaford ; and, in Sifite of 
the real nobility of Brayford’s character, it must be con- 
fessed that it was not only Mrs. Gardner’s wrongs which 
he was anxious to avenge, but tiis own ; not only Miss 
Crosby whom he wished to save from the machinations of a 
villain, but the Sleafords to whom he wished to return in 
kind some of the indignities and miseries they had inflicted 
upon him. “ An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” had 
impelled him to action, rather than the Saviour’s teaching 


25 


CRUEL LONDON. 


of returning good for evil ; and yet Brayford was satisfied 
that he had a right to look that Christian congregation in 
the face, and feel that he was doing a virtuous and religious 
work. Nor are we prepared to say that he was not, though 
it must be acknowledged his motives were rather mixed, 
and it would be no outrage on his good heart to say that 
the dramatic feature of the situation was not without some 
little attraction for him. 

Mrs. Gardner rose from her seat when the congregation 
were chanting the psalms, which they did on holy days 
and great festivals, assisted by the organ and a voluntary 
choir of men and women. The scene and the music were 
very strange to her ; but here a dreaming peacefulness had 
stolen upon her. Had it not been for a feeling that she 
was in some way doing her duty to her child by remaining, 
she would like to steal out of the church even now, and go 
back to the humble security of her London rooms. The 
])ews in the old Marsh church were high and stately ; but 
once she thought she could see the man whom she believed 
to be her husband, and more than once she did hear his 
voice joining in the solemn responses of the congregation 
to the priest. The service dragged on in a strange, dull 
m3"sterious fashion, at times leading her into dreams of 
the past, and then moving her to tears by its simple heart- 
stirring beauty. 

Strange faces looked down on her from the gallery where 
the choristers sat, men and women, young and old. Once 
she thought the parson fixed his eyes upon her, and she 
bent her head in fear. Then again she prayed fervently 
and felt refreshed. By the time that the incumbent came 
to the reading of the second lesson for the day she was 
quite calm and resigned to her fate, whatever it might be. 
Brayford had marked the place in the Prayer-Book when it 
was his intention to bring down the reckless audacity and 
arrogance of Mr. Tom Sleaford, who had helped to ruin 
him, and who was in full tide of a successful attack upon 
an absent friend, who had helped Sleaford many a time in 
his need. Caroline had found comfort in the words of the 
second lesson ; not only because they seemed prophetic, 
coming immediately before the dramatic event of the day, 
but on account of their appropriateness to her painful situa- 
tion ; and their general promise of strength in tho hour of 
trial also impressed Brayford. 

“Courage,” he whispered, “those are God’s words,” as 


CRUEL LONDON. 


259 


he followed the comforting declarations of the prophet 
Isaiah, allotted to the contemplation of the faithful on the 
first Sunday after Christmas: “ He giveth power to the faint ; 
and to them that have no might He increaseth strength. 
Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young 
men shall utterly fall ; but they that wait upon the Lord 
shall renew their strength ; they shall mount up with wings 
as eagles ; they shall run and not be weary, and they shall 
Avalk and not faint.” 

“ Here ended the second lesson” were words that flut- 
tered more than one heart in the congregation ; for this is 
the period of the service at which the Church orders that 
banns of marriage shall be published. Jabez Thompson 
looked round at Tom Sleaford, and smiled as the minister 
began to fidget with some papers that lay by the side of 
his Bible. Jane Crosby bent down her head, and her heart 
beat wildly, for it seemed at the moment as if all the best 
instincts of her nature cried out against the declaration 
that was about to be made. For a moment the desire was 
strong upon her to repudiate the minister’s authority ; but 
she only turned round and looked helplessly at Mrs. Kester ; 
and then pressing her hand upon her heart she heaved a 
sigh, that Kester declared might have been heard all t)ver 
the church if at that moment the parson had not commenced 
to speak. These were the words that clashed upon Jane 
Crosby’s sudden and unexpected signal of trouble : 

“ I 2:)ublish the banns of marriage between Jane Crosby 
and Tom Sleaford. If any of you know cause or just im- 
pediment why these two persons should not be joined to- 
gether in holy matrimony, ye are to declare it. This is the 
first time of asking.” 

“ And the last ! ” exclaimed a voice from a pew at the 
east end of the church. 

It was answered by a smothered expression of surprise 
from the entire congregation. 

“ I forbid the banns ! ” continued the voice, in loud, 
emphatic tones, and Brayford stepped from his pew into 
the aisle, with a dignity and firmness quite foreign to his 
customary manner, and quite equal to the solemnity of the 
occasion 

“Walk into the vestry, sir,” said the priest, in a voice 
tremulous with surprise and emotion. 

“Pardon me, reverend sir,” said Mr. Jabez Thompson, 
rising in his pew j “ bear with me, my brethren ^ this is a 


260 


CRUEL LONDON. 


strange and startling situation. I would crave the vener- 
able incumbent’s permission that the grounds for this dar- 
ing interruption may be stated, if possible, as publicly as 
this stranger’s claim to be heard is made.” 

The incumbent was utterly' overcome. The emergency 
was one which he had never previously encountered. 

“ I am no stranger to the Marsh or to the county,” said 
Brayford ; and I am ready to state publicly why I forbid 
the banns between Jane Crosby and Tom Sleaford.” 

Brayford was recognized by several members of the con- 
gregation, and his name was whispered audibly. 

“ On what grounds ? I ask it as Miss Crosby’s trustee 
and Mr. Sleaford’s friend,” demanded Jabez Thompson, 
the whole congregation having . by this time risen to its 
feet. 

“ As the self-constituted guardian of Tom Sleaford’s 
wife, I answer on the ground that he is already married,” 
was the defiant and startling response. 

“ It is false ! ” exclaimed Tom Sleaford, looking towards 
the pew where Jane Crosby sat, with her face buried in her 
hands. 

“ It is true ! ” said a soft, gentle voice, as Brayford 
led Caroline "Virginia Denton Sleaford into the aisle. 

Jane Crosby raised her head and listened. Tom Slea- 
ford was thankful that the incumbent of the parish now 
found himself sufliciently recovered from his surprise to in- 
terfere. 

“ Brethren,” said the minister, “ dearly beloved, the 
vestry is the place for this discussion ; and inasmuch as 
our devotions have been rudely broken in upon, I crave 
your attention while I pronounce the benediction, for I am 
too much overcome to proceed further.” 

The congregation turned their faces respectfully and 
reverently towards the altar. The minister, much agitated, 
walked within the rails, delivered the priestly blessing, and 
fell upon his knees ; while the congregation gradually left 
the church, to break up into groups in the porch and out- 
side ; and Mr. Brayford and the lady who claimed to be 
Tom Sleaford’s wife went into the vestry. Miss Crosby 
remained in her own pew, and Mr. Jabez Thompson and 
Mr. Tom Sleaford had a whispered consultation in theirs. 
Hurriedly asked what it all meant, Tom Sleaford had 
replied, — 

“ Black-mail.” 


CRUEL LOILDON. 


2G1 


‘‘ The charge must be met without flinching,’^ whispered 
Thompson, “ true or not. If it is true, there are no words 
bad enough to describe your conduct.’- 

“ It is false, it is false,” said Tom ; “ the woman has no 
claim upon me.” 

“ If it is merely some indiscretion of a young man, or a 
case of black-mailing, you may get over it ; though I doubt 
if Miss Crosby will ever see you again. Her pride will be 
cut to the quick.” 

“ I know the woman, and I tell you her charge is false, 
and her object is money.” 

“ Very well, then, come into the vestry, and confront 
her.” 

Mr. Thompson opened the pew door and went out into 
the aisle, his footsteps resounding through the empty church. 
Tom Sleaford buttoned his coat tightly over his chest, and 
follov’^ed the trim-looking old gentleman. “ Heck or noth- 
ing,” thought Tom, “ I rhust break her down — crush her, 
that is my only chance. His brain was busy with inven- 
tions of her baseness and slurs upon Brayford’s reputa- 
tion, He knew nothing of the woman’s escape from “ The 
Retreat,” the intrigue of Robinson, the rescue by Bray- 
ford. He had heard nothing of her or about her since the 
paragraph which noticed her adventure in Porter’s Build- 
ings and her introduction to Miss Weaver. When on an 
occasional visit to the West-End Bank of Deposit, in con- 
nection with which he held an honorary office, he had care- 
fully avoided that part of Marylebone Road in which “ The 
Retreat ” was situated. Through the woman’s silence, and 
the absence of inquiries being instituted by Miss Weaver, 
he had come to the conclusion that Caroline had gone back 
to the United States. A marriage with Miss Crosby was a 
far safer and more certain inheritance than banking trans- 
actions in which interest was paid out of capital : therefore 
he had laid careful and scientific siege to Manor Farm, and 
the garrison was surrendering to him at discretion when 
the diversion we have just described was brought about by 
the enemy whose operations he most despised, “ that fool 
Brayford,” as he was wont to speak of him in the old days, 
when he and his father were robbing him. 

As the minister left the altar, ho paused at the pew 
where Jane Crosby sat with Mrs. Kester at her side. 

“ It is a sad business,” he said, “ but it may be all for 
the best, whatever the end is.” 


2G2 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“ Yes said Jane, bo-sving her head under the weiglit 
of shame and annoyance. 

The charge may be untrue.” 

Jane could not talk about it, even to the pastor. 

“ Thank you very much for your sympathy,” she said ; 
‘•Kesterand myself will go home now. Will you, sir, be 
good enough to. tell Mr. Thompson to call on me when he 
leaves the vestry ? ” 

Tlie minister saw that his best course was to leave Miss 
Crosby alone, and he went into the vestry. 

“ Do you think our neighbors will be gone home by this, 
Kester? ” asked Jane, “ or will they be waiting to condole 
with us and pity us ?” 

“ I shouldn’t wonder if they’re all on ’em lying in wait, 
just as you think. Shall I look out and see?” 

“ Do, Kester, I’m too much ashamed to meet any friend- 
ly face at present.” 

Kester clattered down the aisle, brushing the Christmas 
decorations on the old Saxon pillars as she passed them, 
and presently returned to say that most of the congrega- 
tion were standing about in the cold ; some of them couldn’t 
get away because their traps had not come for them ; but 
the sexton had gone to unlock the door beneath the belfry, 
and they could walk over the foot-bridge across Martin’s 
Dike, and go home that way w'ithout interruption. And so 
Jane Crosby stole away, and they who stood about the 
church saw her go by a back path to the farm, and she 
never once lifted her head. 

As the news spread, the few conveyances for which most 
of the shivering congregation were waiting arrived ; and as 
the persons in the vestry seemed likely to remain there for 
a long time, the people gradually went awaj^, dotting the 
wide plain in various directions, and disappearing at the 
homesteads, where long columns of smoke went up into 
the frosty air, or fading from' the sight behind the mist 
which in all seasons hangs about the sky-line on the broad 
fringe of the great Lincolnshire flat. 

Meanwhile Mr. Brayford told Caroline Virgina Denton’s 
story, and Tom Sleaford, with hard, unflinching firmness, 
denied it all, exce})t that “this woman had been his mis- 
tress.” He owned that his conduct to that extent was im- 
moral, and perhaps indefensible in the eyes of a minister of 
the Gospel but Mr. Thompson, as a man of the world, 
would not look upon it from so severe a standpoint. 


CRUEL LONDON. 


263 


Tom Sleaford overdid his defence ; and his attack upon 
his victim overleaped itself. He branded her as an impos- 
tor, and worse. He spoke of her being found in the lowest 
haunts of vice in London, and gave that as a reason why 
he could not seek her out ; for he felt that she had fallen 
too low for restoration even to her friends. 

These taunts did not touch Caroline as he had expected; 
She looked up through her tears at the minister and at Mr. 
Thompson, and the reproachful innocence of her face ap- 
pealed to their judgment as well as to their hearts. The 
blacker Tom Sleaford painted her, the whiter she shone, 
through she only uttered a word of denial or explanation 
now and then. 

“ I wouldn’t have come here,” she said, “ but that I was 
persuaded it was the only way to save a good, true woman 
from a life of misery and a bad man from another crime ; 
though I have been and am anxious to establish my mar- 
riage for the sake of my child, not for my own sake — not 
for my own sake.” 

“You don’t know the craft of this woman,” said Slea- 
ford. “ You do know, sir,” he continued, now addressing 
the clergyman, “ that the devil can assume a pleasing shape 
for his own purposes. This woman, the degenerate daughter 
of some miserable slave-owner by a black mother-^ — 

“ iSTo !” exclaimed Caroline, interrupting him, and ap- 
pealing to the others. “If you are men, you will not let 
liiin say that, lest the very church fall on us where we 
stand.” 

Only an American can fully appreciate the bitterness of 
this last invention of Tom Sleaford’s malice. 

“ Don’t excite yourself, my child,” said Brayford, laying 
his hand gently upon her shoulder. “ Don’t listen to his 
vile slanders ; be seated. Hone of us believe a word he 
says.” 

Tom Sleaford made a step towards Brayford in a 
threatening attitude ; the minister raised his hand depre- 
catinsjly, and Mr. Thompson took Sleaford by the arm. 

“"The other gentlemen don’t know him as well as I do,” 
continued Brayford, while he induced the woman, by signs, 
to be reseated.* “ They don’t know that he is a thief as 
well as a liar.” 

“ Mr. Brayford,” expostulated the parson, “ such lan- 
guage as that ” 

“ Is the language of the Scriptures and the Gospel yor, 


CRUEL LONDON. 


preach ! I do not use it in passion, sir, but calmly, as I 
look that felon in the face, and denounce him as a thief and 
a liar, and the son of a father no less abandoned.” 

It taxed Jabez Thompson’s strength to hold Tom Slea- 
ford, whose rage now got the better of his discretion. 

“ There is only one answer to words of that character,” 
he cried. 

“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” remonstrated the incumbent, 
“ this is a desecration of the sacred edifice in which we are 
assembled. Mr. Brayford, I must beg of you to withdraw 
that language.” 

“If it ofends your reverence, I must withdraw it here, 
but only to repeat it outside, where .Mr. Sleaford can give 
me that particular answer he pretends to be anxious 
about,” said Brayford, adding, as he noticed the anxious 
face of Caroline, “ Don’t be alarmed, my child ; don’t be 
alarmed.” 

“ And I also beg,” said the parson, “ that you will not 
forget that this is the Lord’s Day.” 

J abez Thompson had not spoken a single word to in- 
terrupt or to modify the explanation of this painful busi- 
ness. He had watched the parties with the critical eye of 
a man of the world, who had had some experience in judging 
men and women. 

“ Excuse me, Mr. Incumbent,” he said, “ and you, mad- 
am, and gentlemen, I think we may now bring this matter 
to a close. Have you, Mr. Sleaford, any more to say ? ” 

“ Only to repeat that ” 

“ Don’t repeat anything,” said the lawyer, interrupting 
him. “ What we have heard is sulficiently impressed upon 
our minds. Have you anything to add ? ” 

“ Only to denounce these persons as conspirators and 
black-mailers.” 

“ Yes, yes,” said the lawyer, impatiently ; “ and you, Mr. 
Brayford ? ” 

“ Do we look like conspirators and black-mailers ? ” 
asked Brayford. 

“No, I am bound to say you do not,” replied the lawyer, 
“ since you ask me the question ; and I feel it equally my 
duty as an honest man to say that at present I can only re- 
gard my ward. Miss Crosby, next to this lady, as a most 
wronged and injured woman ” 

“ But, Thompson ” interfered Tom Sleaford. 

“You said you had finished,” replied Thompson. 


CRUEL LONDON, 


265 


Tom Sleaford retreated a step backward. 

“I don’t know,” continued Thompson, turning to look 
at Tom Sleaford, “ whether you married this woman or not, 
but I have no doubt that you have treated her cruelly, and 
I have to thank Mr. Brayford, and I do so humbly, for sav- 
ing my ward from a lifelong misery to which I should have 
condemned her ; I, who have but one object in life, to min- 
ister to her happiness; I, who, with all my experience, 
couldn’t tell a scoundrel from an honest man ! ” 

The old man turned coldly upon Tom Sleaford as he 
dealt him this blow. The younger man staggered under it, 
and looked round upon the group as if he were at bay, and 
in doubt whether to attack or retreat. 

“ If, sir,” said the lawyer, the color mounting to his 
already florid cheeks, “ if you think there is any possibility 
of your reversing this verdict, you can appeal ; and in that 
case I shall be in my office on Monday morning at ten 
o’clock.” 

“ This is cruel,” gasped Tom Sleaford, flinging himself 
into a chair with the air of an injured man, for in presence 
of the belligerent aspect of both Thom^ffeon and Brayford he 
now deemed the business of martyrdom the most becoming 
role. 

“ Where are you staying, Mr. Brayford ? ” asked the 
lawyer. 

“ At the George.” 

“ I will wait upon you at twelve on Monday, if the hour 
will be convenient.” 

“ Yes, sir, certainly,” said Brayford. 

“ Good-morning,” said the lawyer, bowing to the incum- 
bent and to Brayford and the lady ; and, straightening him- 
self as he looked at Tom Sleaford with an air of contempt 
and defiance, he took up his hat and left the vestry, his firm 
footsteps resounding through the old place until the great 
doors of the porch clanged upon them, and he was gone. 

Mr. Brayford signified to Caroline that they, too, should 
go ; and the parson took o£E his gown, and began to put on 
his overcoat 

“ I would like to speak to you, sir, before we leave,” said 
Tom Sleaford. 

Brayford and Caroline bowed to the minister, and left 
the church. Their conveyance was waiting for them ; and 
when Tom Sleaford stood in the porch, tak^ing his leave of 
Ibe incumbent, to whom he protested that he was the victim 


266 


CRUEL LONDON. 


of a wicked and cruel conspiracy, he could see the “ top car,” 
which was conveying his accusers to Burgh, tossing to and 
fro upon the frozen waste like a vessel on the ocean, but not 
so agitated as his own thoughts, which jostled each other in 
their wildness and perplexity. He started to walk to 
Burgh, some eight miles, over the broad plain, where, in the 
olden days, the Saxons had made their last desperate stand 
against the Norman conqueror. At first he merely crawled 
along, like a man uncertain of his course. Presently he felt 
the chill of the biting air and the frosty wind that came in 
withering gusts down dike and drain from the sea. He 
stopped for a moment as if to face it and defy it, shaking 
himself like a dog after a swim. Then he stepped out, 
breasting the wind, facing the blast, and he began to curse 
and swear aloud, denouncing the absent in foul terms and 
with opprobrious epithets. Then he rehearsed in his mind 
the murder of Brayford. He could have done the deed at 
that moment. For the first time in his cowardly life he 
realized, as he thought, the feelings of a murderer, the desire 
for blood. He saw Brayford at his feet appealing for 
mercy. He saw himfelf beating down, raining bloody blows 
uimn his head. 

‘‘ And you ! ” he screamed, as he paced along, defying 
the winter wind, “ and you, Mrs. Gardner ! Wait! You 
are my wife, and you are not, as I may elect. It may suit 
my humor to claim you. And then ! curse you. I’ll be even 
with you ! ” 

When Jabez Thompson discovered that he had allowed 
his first feelings of suspicion in regard to the character of 
Tom Sleaford, not only to be lulled into repose, but that the 
diplomatic amiability of the young man and his assumed 
frankness had replaced doubt with confidence, and suspicion 
with friendship ; and that he had been cheated into this 
amicable relationship, he was angry in proportion to the 
assistance he had given Tom in his successful overtures for 
the hand of Miss Crosby. The clever lawyer had been 
wilfully deceived, for he had had evidence of the father’s 
villany, and he had condoned the discreditable features of 
. the , son’s financial difficulties. The astute man of the world, 
who, knowing horses so well, should have had some insight 
into human character (for it is an ascertained fact that men 
much devoted to the breeding, rearing, and running of race- 
horses become intelligent j)hysiognomists), the generally 


CRUEL LONDON. 


267 


acknowledged reliable and keen sportsman, who could bring 
down his man in an argument as well as his bird in the air, 
had been duped. He was, therefore, fully possessed with 
the anger of a generous man who has been victimized through 
the magnanimity of his disposition. Tom Sleaford went to 
him boldly on Monday morning at ten o’clock to appeal 
against the verdict of Sunday, and had found the obdurate 
judge prepared with half-a-dozen special interrogations as 
hard to answer as the case put against him in the vestry. 
Mr. Thompson not only informed him that Miss Crosby 
had given him express instructions to forbid his appearance 
at the Manor Farm, but advised him to quit the Marsh with 
all speed, lest some means were formed for detaining him 
against his will. Tom Sleaford left the office and Avent 
straight to his hotel, and ordered his horse to be saddled ; 
while the lawyer waited upon Mr. Brayford, to satisfy him- 
self more completely upon some points of the indictment 
against the scoundrel who had played so artfully upon his 
amiability and his mad admiration of sportsman-like feats 
and aptitude for country life. 

In spite of the lawyer’s admonition, Tom Sleaford pre- 
sented himself at Manor Farm to seek an interview with 
Miss Crosby. He was met by Goff, who went far beyond 
the instructions of the mistress, Avhen he said that he and 
any laborer about the fai*m who caught him on the place 
had orders to chuck him into the nearest dike. Tom was 
not coward enough to accept that declaration tamely, espe- 
cially when the speaker was an old man. He seized Goff 
by the throat, and shook him till Kester’s admirer began to 
turn blue. “ That’s my answer to your orders ! ” exclaimed 
Tom, throwing his man, and getting upon his horse, which 
he had tied to the gate leading into the farm. As he gal- 
loped away he found a little patience in his mind now that 
he had to some extent vindicated his physical jnanhood, 
Avhich had not been questioned. But his latest disappoint- 
ment and all his troubles he laid at the door of Caroline 
Denton and Harry Brayford, and he made a coarse, profane 
vow with himself to be revenged. At night he had taken 
a late train on the way to London ; and left the Marsh to 
settle down to its theories, gossip, explanations, descriptions, 
and surmises concerning the forbidding of the banns. 

For many a month afterwards tliis was the most engross- 
ing, romantic, and sensational topic of tlie district. It di- 
vided the honors at tea-tables, whist-parties, and market 


268 


CRUEL LONDON. 


dinners with the latest murder. No banns were published 
in any of the local churches without erciting a thrill of sus- 
pense to circulate through the sensitive constitution of every 
congregation, ending in a sigh of relief when, after a suffi- 
cient pause, no voice was raised in response to the priestly 
challenge — “ If any of you know cause or just impediment 
why these two persons should not be joined together in 
holy matrimony, you are now to declare it.” 


CHAPTER I. 

TEAVELLERS FEOM FAR AND NEAR. 

Winter had been vanquished by spring. Even the icy 
fastnesses of the Californian mountains had succumbed 
to the attack of the lusty monarch of the leafy year. The 
Sacramento, released from its frosty moorings, made glad- 
some music in the mighty valley. The busy miners who 
had lived through the Christmas storms once more wielded 
their picks and shovels. When the snow had gone, their 
less fortunate brethren were discovered by the sunshine, 
stark and stiff, awaiting the resurrection. Some of these 
victims to the gold mania had, to all appearance, at the 
beginning of the winter chosen localities far better pro- 
tected from wind and weather than those who had been 
saved. No matter where you pitch your tent or how 
you shield it, if your time be come. Similarly it signifies 
not that the mountain crush your house and the snow 
overwhelm you, if it please God to put forth His hand to 
your rescue. 

Decker and Kerman survived the disasters of that 
never to be forgotten Christmas in the Sacramento, and 
they arrived at the Palace Hotel, London, on a bright 
May day, when the great city was putting on its gay 
clothes ; when the almond trees were in blossom, and green 
leaves decorated sombre streets and squares with fresh 
and delicate tints ; when country cousins and county belles 
thronged the West-end streets, and added to the lustre 
of the Row; when Cruel London put on her most artful 
smiles, and opened all her golden gates with clang of gong 


ORUEL LONDON. 


269 


and clasli of bells to those accredited to her exclusive 
court by favor of birth and fortune, or by force of swag- 
ger and false credentials. As yet she knew not Docker nor 
Kerman. Their fame had not at present reached even her 
scouts and her emissaries, else she would have made ready to 
greet them and smile a ready welcome ; for the new-comers 
were among the world’s richest men. John Kerman, de- 
spised of time-serving clubmen, the vulgar hero of Don- 
caster and Fitzroy Square, was rich as the richest of the 
Rothschilds. Tristram Decker was the principal owner of 
a region of gold. He could not count his wealth. For him 
an El Dorado had sprung up in response to his prospect- 
ing rod. His wildest hopes and his worst fears had been 
realized. He was endowed with untold gold and a fatal 
disease. An eminent American physician had , confirmed 
his belief that consumption had laid its bony hand upon 
him and numbered his days. The doctor had warned him 
that only with care eould he possibly live five or seven 
years, and to secure that short respite it was necessary 
that he should sojourn in a warm and equable climate. 
England, he said, was better suited to his condition than 
the United States ; but his advice was to seek rest in the 
soothing atmosphere of Madeira. It was a poor business 
that all his wealth could do no more than this. He would 
have given every foot of his golden farm for good health, 
if Caroline Denton was single, and would take him for 
himself ; otherwise he would cheerfully accept the penalty 
of death, with the power to load her with riches in return 
for five years of her society. The more certain his early 
death, the more his soul yearned for the love of this 
woman. The poorest laborer in the streets who had 
health and strength to enjoy his hard-earned meal had no 
cause to envy Tristram Decker. Knowing his future, the 
veriest beggar might have shrunk from changing places 
with him. 

Tristram Decker’s mission in life, as he laid it down 
for himself, was to find Mr. William Grraham Denton, and 
to lavish riches upon him for the sake of his daughter ; 
and, if she were still single, to beg her from pure .charity 
to make his short stay in the world happy, out of the wild, 
deep, maddening love he bore her. What a world of dis- 
appointment and sorrow fate had in store for him !- His 
love had idolized the object of his fancy. His poetic tem- 
perament, his imaginative power, his egotistic selection of 


270 


CRUEL LONDON. 


the Southern girl as a type of all that is pure and tender 
and good and true in woman had never for a moment 
permitted a suspicion of weakness in his idol. It might 
chance that to doubt her would be to hate her. To admit 
a flaw in the angelic figure would be to cry aloud for the 
destruction of an impostor, whose overpowering beauty 
only heightened her offense. How would he read that 
story of her life at Essam, with all those attendant 
smudges that come out of touching the world's pitch 2 

“ I don’t know,” he said, as they sat at a window of the 
hotel, w^atching the stream of London life as it ebbed and 
flowed in the shadow of Westminster Abbey — “ I don’t 
know that a man in my condition has a right to ask a 
young girl to marry him. Nor an old one, for that matter,” 
iie added, with a smile. 

There are thousands who would be only too glad to 
have you, Tristy, if you were on your deathbed even.” 

“Perhaps the readier on that account, Jack. What an 
inheritance I should be ! But to linger about, an invalid, 
for five years, and ask a lovely girl to be my nurse, that’s 
hardly fair, is it ? ” 

“You take too gloomy a view of the situation. I will 
find a doctor who will put you right. London is a cruel 
city, but it’s mighty clever, old man ; perhaps the cleverest 
under the sun.” 

“ Ah, well,” said Decker, “ we shall see what we shall 
see. It will be all the same a hundred years hence, any- 
how. The men who built that abbey church have had 
neither headache nor heartache for a good many hundred 
years. Jack.” 

“No, my boy, no,” Kerman replied. “We must go 
and see it, Tristy. When I did the swell business in Lon- 
don it wasn’t the thing among my set to go about seeing 
the sights of the place ; it was only common folks or foi- 
eigners who prowled around Westminster Abbey, the 
Houses of Parliament, the Tower, and St. Paul’s; and it 
was your duty to cut anybody dead who had been up the 
Monument, though I’m told it’s a wonderful sight to look 
down on London from the top of the column, or, for that 
matter, from the dome of St. Paul’s.” 

“ What is our programme. Jack ? ” 

“We ought to rest to-day and do nothing, but that 
won’t suit you, I know ; so I have ordered a carriage to be 
here in an hour to take us to the City to see our bankers. 


CRUEL LONDON. 


271 


to ask them who is the best doctor for you to consult ; and 
then I think we will look up that curious fellow Harry 
Brayford, and take him' into our counsels, that is, if you 
like the looks of him, and I see no reason to change my 
mind about him. His place will amuse you, at all events ; 
and he is a character.” 

“Very well. Jack,” said Decker; “we must lose no 
time ; I must get on the track of the Dentons ; you must 
help me with that old Secesh ; he’ll bedikely to listen to a 
manly, straight-spoken good fellow like you, Jack. And 
Caroline ! Oh, my dear boy, if you only knew how my 
very soul yearns for that woman ! ” 

“We are both in the same boat, for that matter, Tristy, 
only I’m not such an impulsive, tempestuous chap as you 
are ; if I had been we should never have met.” 

“ Then I am glad you are as you are.” 

“ If you had been me, you would have taken Tom Slea- 
ford by the throat at that reception I have so often told 
you of, and carried Jane Crosby off by storm.” 

“Yes, by the sacred stars and stripes I should !” ex- 
claimed Decker. “ I have always thought that fellow was 
a sneak and a cur.” 

“Perhaps he was ; I often think he was now, though I 
didn’t at the time. Supimsing Jane is his wife ! That will 
be a bitter pill, Tristy. Unless that message of minOj in 
which I exposed my heart to her, gripped her true womanly 
nature, she is Mrs Tom Sleafoi%'^',’ Well, I can’t blame 
her. I wonder how Mrs. Roper gets along ? ” 

“Who is she?” 

“ The little girl who would have sacrificed herself for 
my money.” 

“ Oh, yes, I remember your telling me about her. She’s 
liappy enough if she’s been lucky ; it’s quite clear she knew 
the value of money.” 

“ Well, Tristy; you will have plenty of opportunities of 
testing the strength of your golden talisman in this city.” 

“ 1 hope so.” 

“I must introduce you to old Sleaford; he would sell 
his soul for money. It will amuse you, who are shrewd in 
the world’s ways, to see him begin to lay traps and snares 
for your coin. And there’s a confederate named Robinson, 
the Hon. Fitzherbert Robinson, as some people used to call 
him. He’s a sort of decoy bird ; says ‘ Haw ! haw ! ’ and 
talks of his friend Lord This and Lord That. We shall 


271i 


CRUEL LONDON. 


have some fun, Tristy, when we’ve got all our serious busi- 
ness settled. You’ll like a turn in the city. Old Maclosky 
Jones, he’s as wily as poor old Maggs was. Lord, how 
they cleaned me out among them. What a fool I was, to 
be sure ! ” 

It was quite an accidental circumstance, if anything in 
this life is accidental, that brought Decker and Kerman to 
this particular hotel, in the shadow of Westminister Abbey ; 
but it was the only house at which Mr. Jabez Thompson 
stayed during his brief visits to the metropolis, and when 
Jane Crosby resolved to leave the farm to the care of Mr. 
and Mrs. Goff, and take a holiday in London and a trip to 
Paris, Mr. Jabez Thompson had engaged rooms for herself 
and maid at this establishment. For many weeks after a 
certain painful incident of the first Sunday after Christmas, 
Miss Crosby had refused to see anybody, or to visit with 
her neighbors. Her pride and her remorseful belief that 
heaven had punished her for being untrue to the only man 
she really loved, had kept her mind in a continual agitation, 
until her health was seriously affected, and she had been 
compelled under medical direction, to take long rides by 
the sea. To set her up completely, the local authority de- 
clared change of scene necessary, and Mr. Jabez Thompson 
had exercised his influence so successfully as to arrange a 
visit to London and Paris, appointing himself his ward’s 
“ lord in waiting.” They had had some little discussion 
upon the point in regarff to the proprieties; Jane had said 
she did not care to furnish the Marsh with another scandal ; 
and, after all, her shrewd trustee had not shown himself the 
most discreet adviser an unprotected woman could have. 
Jabez had argued that she couldn’t visit London and Paris 
without somebody to take care of her. He hoped, while he 
was experienced enough to do that, he was also sufiiciently 
aged to be above suspicion. Half in earnest, half in fun, 
the proprieties had been inquired into and studied, and 
finally pronounced satisfactory by guardian and ward ; and 
the very day before Decker and Kerman arrived in Lon- 
don, Miss Crosby and her maid and Mr. Jabez Thompson 
entered the Palace Hotel. Kerman might have seen their 
names in the book of arrivals if he had looked at it. The 
world is very little, after all. 

As Decker and Kerman were leaving their rooms in re- 
sponse to the announcement that the carriage was at the 
door, Miss Crosby was coming along the corridor. The 


CRUEL LONDON 


273 


meeting was not romantic, but the situation was fraught 
with interesting and important consequences. Kerman 
gripped Decker’s arm, and came to a sudden standstill, as a 
well-dressed woman in full morning attire, bonneted, 
cloaked, and gloved, came sailing along with beaming face 
and elastic tread. She did not appear to see any one. She 
was evidently in a hurry. Kerman recognized her on the 
instant. 

“ Miss Crosby ! ” he gasped, as she was about to pass 
him. 

She turned round inquiringly, as if in doubt whether 
she had been spoken to or not ; and then the color left her 
cheeks, and she looked anxiously into Kerman’s face. 

“John!” she exclaimed, “ Mr. Kerman; why, really, 
is that you ?” 

“ It is, indeed,” he said. 

The color rushed back to her cheeks, and there was an 
expression of joy in her face which overcame all Kerman’s 
caution and reticence. In another moment he had caught 
her in his arms and kissed her. 

Decker sauntered along the corridor. 

“Jane, forgive me,” said Kerman, trembling with emo- 
tion ; “ I couldn’t help it. If you only knew how much I 
love you ! ” 

She disengaged herself and looked confused. 

“ Ah, John,” she said, “ if you had only told me that be- 
fore you went away ! ” 

“ Why, why ? ” he asked, ten thousand fears besetting 
him. “It is not too late, Jane ? ” 

“I don’t know,” she said, in a low, sad voice. 

“ You are not married ? ” 

“ Thank God ! no,” she replied. 

*• Amen ! ” said Kerman. “ But why that anxious look ? 
You are not engaged ? ” 

“No.” 

“ Then let me engage you now, Jane, and make up that 
lost time when some devil blinded me to your goodness, 
and hid my love under a mountain of conceit and pride.” 

“ You have surprised me so much I hardly know where 
I am or what I’m saying. See, there are people coming 
along the passage. This is our sitting-room. No. 6 — will 
you come in ? ” 

“Not till you say ‘Yes,’ ” he replied, taking her arm and 


274 


CRUEL LONDON., 


linking it in his own, and walking to and fro opposite the 
room she had indicated. 

“ Oh, John, you know I will say ‘ Yes.’ I do say ‘ Yes ’ 
with all my heart, but ” 

“ But — why but ? ” " 

“ Strange things have happened since you went away. 
When you know all you may not care whether I say ‘Yes’ 
or ‘ ]!7o.’ ” 

“ Not care ! he repeated, the old vague fears crowding 
about his heart. “ Jane, what is this mystery? ” 

“ I have made a fool of myself ? ” 

Tlie frank, almost blunt, character of the woman came 
out full and hearty in this rough mode of explanation. 

Made a fool of yourself ? ” said Kerman, the expres- 
sion even striking liirn as incongruous in the mouth of this 
liandsome and elegant woman. 

“You are letting my arm drop. You like me a little less 
already. ” 

He pressed her arm to his side. 

“You were always a strange girl,” he said, pausing to 
look into her face, “ but as good and true as steel ; and you 
shall please yourself, Jane, whether you tell me another 
word about what has happened. If you don’t tell me I’ll 
never ask you ; but nothing can change my love for you, 
and we’ll be married .to-morrow, if you will.” 

“ Jack, it shall be as you please ; it’s not my fault that we 
vv’ ere not married long ago. God bless 3'ou for this confidence 
and trust ! ” 

The tears came into her eyes. She had tried to keep them 
back by an effort to be off-handed and careless, but the 
large-hearted, manly words of her lover touched her, and the 
fountains of feeling welled over. 

“ Come in and see Jabez Thompson,” she said, sobbing as 
she led him to the room. “ He’s waiting for me. He will 
explain, he will tell you. I was not so much to blame as you 
may think at first. They worried me — he pestered me— 
Jabez thought it was right.’ 

•They were in the room by this time. 

“Jabez Thompson, here is John come back again. Tell 
him what a fool I made of myself. He wants to marry me. 
If he doesn’t change his mind when you have explained all 
that has happened, ring the bell and send Mary to tell me 
to come back. I am going to my room.” 


CRUEL LONDON-. 275 

Before Thompson could recover from his surprise, and 
shake Kerman by the hand, she was gone. 

“Excuse me a moment/’ said Kerman, “ I have a friend 
outside.” 

He rushed to Decker. 

“ My dear Tristy, it is Jane.” 

“ I knew it/’ 

“ Will you wait a little longer for me ? ” 

“ A week, if you like.” 

Kerman w'ent back ^ Ko. 6, and Decker lounged about 
the end of the corridor, where he could see the Abbey. All 
educated Americans know the history of England ; some of 
them are better acquainted with the vStories of our famous 
buildings than we are ourselves. It had been one of 
Tristram Decker’s earliest dreams to visit England, and this 
poem in stone at Westminster, linking the present with the 
vague and misty past, had alv%ys held his imagination cap- 
tive. Face to face with this wonder of the age, even Caro- 
line left his thoughts for a moment, while his mind wandered 
back into the uncertain paths of tradition, and made pictures 
for itself out of schoolboy memories and historical ro- 
mance. He was presently recalled from his reverie by 
Kerman, who begged him to come and be introduced to Miss 
Crosby and Mr. Jabez Thompson, the fine old country 
squire I told you of over our wood fire in the Sacramento.” 

Jane Crosby had been sent for, as requested, and she 
had returned dressed for luncheon, looking the picture of 
all that is fresh and charming in woman. Kerman had in- 
formed her that Mr. Thompson had* explained everything, 
and all he had to say about it was that he must find out 
that poor little woman who had stood between him and 
Toni Sleaford, and give her a substantial proof of his gi’ati- 
tude. The rest of the story he discussesd in the same spirit 
of thankfulness that Fortune had been so good and true ; 
for what right had he to expect that Jane would keep single, 
and that if she did, he, of all othbr men in the world, could 
induce her to marry ? 

Though hardly an hour hud passed since the meeting, 
John and Jane had settled all possible differences^between 
them, and when Decker appeared on the scene, he completed 
the gathering of a happy family. Jabez Thompson, neat as 
ever, his face shining, his head erect, welcomed Decker to 
England, and Jane gave him an invitation to Manor Farm. 

Kerman engaged them all to dine together in his room 


276 


CRUEL LONDON. 


that evening ; and then remembered that he and Decker had 
business to transact, and that a carriage had been waiting 
for them at the door for more than an hour. 

“ By the way,” he said, “ we are going to call on Bray- 
ford ; at least, I was going to take Decker to his place, 
partly out of curiosity to see a character.” 

“ Poor devil ! ” exclaimed Thompson. 

“ Why ? ” 

“ The Sleafords ruined him.” 

“ Is he poor, then ? ” • 

“Very.” 

“ That’s a shame ; he was a good fellow.” 

“ There is not a better,” said the lawyer. 

“ Then he shall be rich.” 

“ How ? ” 

“ I’ll inake him as rich as the richest gravedigger in 
London.” 

“ You ? Have you hit upon a new idea for him ? ” 

“ Yes, I have ; it will astonish him.” 

“ He is not in that line of business now.” 

“ No ! What is his profession now ? ” 

Mr. Thompson consulted a pocket-book, and took out a 
card. 

“ That’s his address and his new business.” 

“ Circularizer and Advertising Agent,” said Kerman, 
reading it. “Well, we can give him some business in the 
advertising way, I think, Tristy? ” 

“ Yes,” said Decker, smiling sadly. 

“ For the present, Xhen, good-by,” said Kerman, taking 
Jane’s hand. 

“ Till dinner-time,” said Thompson, in his breezy way.” 

Jane went to the door to watch them down the corri- 
dor, and Kerman took advantage of the shadow of the 
entrance to kiss her. 

“ Come along, Tristy,” he exclaimed, taking his com- 
panion by the arm. “ Forgive me for being so happy. It 
seems unkind to you, old man ; but I’ll make up to you for 
it. We’ll find your Southern beauty now, and arrange a 
double marriage.” 

As Decker and Kerman’s carriage turned to enter the 
Thames Embankment from Westminster, a pretty barouche 
came along Parliament Street, skirted Palace Green, and 
stopped at the hotel. Mr. Tavener had excited the jealousy 
of Mother Sniggers to the highest pitch, when one day this 


CRUEL LONDON. 


277 


vehicle arrived brand new, with a pair of prancing horses 
and a coachman ; but when the entire turnout became a 
part of the social economy of the artist’s domestic arrange- 
ment, then Mother Sniggers knew that there was really 
something wrong. But that did not trouble Mr. and Mra. 
Tavener. Frank had made his “ hit,” and the money came 
rolling in. They hung his pictures on the line now, and 
tlie dealers kept up a continual competition for the honor 
and profit of buying them. Hence the barouche and pair. 
Miss Crosby had informed Mrs. Tavener of their arrival in 
town, and had expressed a great desire to see her again, 
and also Patty, whose devotion to Kerman she had heard 
of through Mr. Bray ford. The young lady had risen in 
Miss Crosby’s estimation when she thought of her own 
weakness, and she begged Mrs. Tavener, if she should call 
upon her, to bring Patty, whom she hoped to see some day 
at Manor Farm. 

It was, however, with feelings somewhat different to 
those under the influence of which she had written to Mrs. 
Tavener that Jane now received the sisters of Tom Slea- 
ford. 

When they were announced she was in her bedroom, 
upon her knees, weeping tears of joy, and offering up 
|)rayers of thankfulness. She arose hurriedly, dried her 
eyes, and paused to think what she should say and do in 
regard to the sudden and unexpected arrangement between 
herself and Kerman. The thought of Patty Sleaford’s dis- 
appointment troubled her, and she tried to compose her 
features into a state of calmness, though she utterly failed 
to eliminate from the expression of her face the joyousness 
of her heart. 

“Ah, my dear, I am so glad to see you!” she ex- 
claimed. 

Emily kissed her with an earnest hug ; Patty embraced 
her with her accustomed scmg froid. 

“ And this is your husband ? I am proud to make your 
acquaintance, Mr. Tavener! I have often wondered what 
you were like. I am quite satisfied. Miss Sleaford, I con- 
gratulate you ; and Mr. Tavener, I congratulate you.” 

“Thank you for both of us. Miss Crosby,” said Tavener, 
smiling, and stroking his long flowing beard. 

“ And may I ask after Mr. Roper ? ” • 

This to Patty, who stood aside from her sister and 
brother-in-law in her neutral way. 


CRUEL LONDON. 


27H- 


Yes, Miss Crosby ; and he is very well,” she said, in 
measured tones. 

“ I am glad of that.” Do you see him often?” 

“ Once a week,” said Patty, without indicating pleasure 
or annoyance thereat. 

“ I quite expected to have had cards from you ere this 
— ‘ Mr. and Mrs. Roper,’ you know.” 

Jane was feeling her way to a disclosure of what had 
just occurred. 

“ Indeed,” said Patty, “ I am in no hurry to be married ; 
certainly not to Mr. Roper.” 

“ I was afraid, after what had occurred on the 'first 
Sunday after Christmas, neither of you might come and see 
me ; but I couldn’t help it, you know, and ” 

“ My letter of sympathy and regret should have assured 
you that I had only a sisterly and womanly feeling for you 
in the matter, my dear Miss Crosby,” said Emily taking up 
the point without waiting for Jane to explain further. 

Jane blushed. 

Yes, yes,” she said, “ it was very good and very kind. 
Some people wouldn’t speak of a painful affair like this ; 
but I don’t hold with keeping back what is in your heart, 
and I know we are all thinking about it.” 

“ That is true,” said Mrs. Tavener. “ The same out- 
spoken, open-hearted woman as of old. Isn’t she all I 
said she was, Fred ?” 

“ My wife never tires of singing your praises, Miss 
Crosby,” said Tavener. 

“I cannot tell how much I value her good opinion, and 
desire her friendship. I am not what you call a society 
lady, and it’s no good pretending that I am. It’s better to 
be what you really are than try and seem to be something 
else.” 

“Truth, honesty, and kindness,’^ said Emily, “adorn 
any society; do they not, Fred?” 

“And they go hand in hand with happiness, I do 
believe,” said Tavener, Vokiiig at Miss Crosby ; “ for your 
friend’s is the most joyous face I have seen in London for 
many a day.” 

“ I could wish it were not so at this moment, sir,” said 
Jane. “ Will you excuse me if I take Miss Patty into my 
room for a few minutes. I have news for her w^hich I 
should like to tell her first.” 

“ Oh yes,” said Emily. 


CRUEL LONDON. 


279 


“ Will you come with me, Miss Patty?” asked Jane, 
putting her arm round that young lady and leading her 
away. 

When the door was shut and they were alone, Jane 
Crosby said : 

“ They tell me you refuse to marry Mr. Roper because 
you love Mr. Kerman. Is that true? ” 

“ Yes, it’s partly true,” answered Patty, calmly. 

“ But if Mr. Kerman married somebody else ? ” 

“ Then I would forbid the banns,” said Patty, with 
something like a cynical chuckle. 

“ Zes, you’ve a right to sneer, my girl ; I like it. The 
thought of my weakness helps me to be thankful for my 
escape.” 

Patty looked at her inquiringly. 

“ It is all for your good the question I am asking you, 
and what I am going to say.” 

“ Is he married, then ? ” asked Patty. 

“ Should you grieve much if he were ? ” 

“ What would be the good of grieving?” said Patty, as 
if she were asking a question in mental arithmetic. 

“Ko good,” said Jane. You would then say ‘Yes’ to 
Mr. Roper ? ” 

“ The more I say ‘ No’ to him, the more he likes me.” 

“ But that is not the reason why you don’t say ‘ Yes ? ’ ” 

“ I did not want Mr. Kerman to think I was mean about 
his money.” 

“ Is that all ? Be frank wdth me, won’t you ? I can’t 
help admiring and loving you for your devotion.” 

“I thought he behaved so nobby,” said Patty, not 
moved one jot out of her usual manner; “ it was like some- 
thing out of a book.” 

“ Yes, it was indeed.” 

“ And I wanted him to have his money back, I knew 
papa would get it away from Mr. Roper: and papa isn’t to 
be trusted.” 

“ Don’t say that, dear.” 

“ You asked me to be frank.” 

“ But we are taught to honor our parents.” 

“And are they not to be worthy of our honor? When 
Roper had no money pa objected to him, and wanted me 
to marry John Kerman. When he gave all his money 
away, and ten thousand pounds to the man who should 


280 


CRUEL LONDON. 


marry me, then he told me I might marry Roper. I was 
not going to be dealt with as if I were scrip in the city.” 

The slightest deepening of the pink color in Patty^s 
cheek, and a touch of something like earnestness in the 
utterance of the last sentence, which was delivered in a 
louder tone of voice than usual, showed that underneath the 
girl's calm, phlegmatic, and cold manner there might be a 
smouldering volcano. Jane Crosby kissed the pinky-white 
face as she said, — 

Quite right, my child ; quite right.” 

“ And so I told them all I loved John Kerman.” 

“ Yes ; and did you ? As well as Mr. Roper ?” 

“ Just then I did.” ' 

“ But now, dear, now ? Would you marry him if he asked 
you to-day?” 

“ Not if he is married already.” 

“ No, no ; but if Mr. Roper asked you to decide to-day, in 
order that he might marry another lady ? ” 

“ Mr. Roper marry another lady? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ He wouldn’t do it.” 

“ But a man can’t go on waiting forever,” 

“ Archy Roper can.” 

“But.” " 

“Why don’t you tell me what you want to ? — you who 
are so frank.” 

Patty looked into Jane’s face with her calm eyes, resum- 
ing her natural manner, and speaking in measured accents. 

“ Lay your head on my shoulder, and I will whisper it 
into your ear.” 

She took Patty into her arms, and told her of Kerman’s 
return, his proposal to her, the explanation, and their en- 
gagement to be married. Then, all blushes, and with tears 
in her eyes, she waited for Patty’s reply. 

“Well,” said Patty, ‘ I had begun to guess at it; your 
heart beat so, and you looked so happy. All I can say is, I 
would not have given him up to any one else.” 

“ You do give him up ? You won’t grieve about it? ” 

“ What is the good ? ” 

“ My dear Patty !’ exclaimed Jane, kissing her again. 
“What will you do ? Make poor Roper happy, eh ? Will you?” 

“ I don’t know about making him happy — I’ll marry him 
now.” 

“ Are you glad or sorry at tlie news ?” 


CRUEL LONDON, 


281 


“ I think I am glad.” 

^ “ Then you wouldn’t really have liked to give up Mr. 

“ No ; only I wouldn’t be driven. I am not a sheep to 
be bought and sold. It wellnigh broke my heart when 
Mr. Kerman shbwe'd me what a thing I was ! A chattel — 
no better, much worse — for I threw over a man I loved for 
another I didn’t care for, to have horses and carriages, and 
plenty of money. I would have married him then, when 
he found me out, if he had been a beggar ! There !” 

Patty buried her face in Jane Crosby’s neck, and sobbed. 
Nobody had suspected the fire that burnt beneath Patty’s 
icy and worldly manner. She had no knowledge of it her- 
self until Kerman showed her, in the mirror of his own fine 
nature, the miserable object a scheming- father, a foolish 
mother, and a keen experience of the misery of “ stuck-up 
poverty, had made her.” 

“My dear, dear girl,” said Jane,“ you have lifted such a 
load 0$ my heart ! Now let me be practical. Is Mr. Roj^er 
doing well ? ” 

“ Yes, he has settled down to business, given up all con- 
nection with my father ; he has done with horse-racing — I 
told him I would never have a husband who did the sort of 
speculative business my father liked. I and Archy are as 
humble and good as any lovers could be ; I have been sorry 
for him.” 

“Kiss me, Patty ! Let us be sworn friends,” said Jane, 
embracing her again. 

“ That is what he said.” 

“..Who?” 

. “ The. man, who is to be your husband.” 

“ He shall keep his word. Will you come with us to 
Paris — you and Mr. RjOper ? Perhaps w,e can make up a 
nice large party. Mr. Thompson shall telegraph for rooms. 
But let us return to your sister ; I fear we have been a long 
time away.” 

“ You must forgive me,” said Jane, as they re-entered 
the room where Mr. and Mrs. Tavener were waiting. “ Patty 
will explain to you by and by.” 

“ Tell them, Jane,” said Patty. 

“ Very well, then,” said Jane; “my news has grown 
since I took Patty away to talk to her. Two marriages are 
to take place shortly : Mr. Roper and Miss Patty Sleaford, 
Mr. Kerman and Jane Crosby.” 


CRUEL LONDON. 


‘J8:2 


The news was received with delighted surprise; and 
Jane and her visitors sat together for more than an hour 
discussing it and rejoicing over it ; while Tristram Decker 
'was rushing upon his fate in the direction of High Street, 
Marylebone. 


CHAPTER II. 

'NO LONGEE A VISION. 

Aeeived at the famous bank of Amschel Nathans, in St. 
Swithin’s Lane, after some formality they were introduced 
into the private room of the chief, who w^as sitting before a 
pile of papers. 

The banker simply nodded, and they seated themselves 
until he had finished a calculation upon which he was en- 
gaged. The Nathans were foremost among the rulers of 
the world, for the chief Powers of Europe were indebted 
to them. 

“ Your business, gentlemen ? ” 

“ Letters of credit,” said Decker, presenting several 
documents from Harmen, of San Francisco, and Defreres, 
of New York. 

The banker read the papers, and looked at Decker. 

“ Have I the pleasure of addressing Messrs. Decker 
and Kerman?” 

“ I am Decker ; this is my friend Kerman.” 

The banker bowed. “ I have been expecting you.” 

Indeed ! we had not intimated to any one our intention 
of coming to Europe.” 

“ I heard of the Decker Gulch successes,” said the 
banker, “ and yesterday’s mail brought me notice of your 
letters of credit. I congratulate you.” 

“ Thank you,” said Decker. 

“ One million sterling to the credit of Decker and 
Kerman,” said the banker ; “ joint account ; and five hundred 
thousand each to John Kerman and Tristram Decker.” 

That’s it,” said Decker. 


cruel LONDON. 


283 


The banker touched the bell. It was answered by a 
white-haired old man. 

“ Take the signatures for these letters of credit, Isaacs.” 

The attendant bowed. 

“ This way, gentlemen,” he said. 

They followed him, inscribed their signatures in a pon- 
derous volume, and returned to the private room. 

“ What else can I do for you, gentlemen ? ” 

“ The doctors on the other side,” said Decker, “ give 
me only five years of life. I want ten at the least.” 

« Yes?” 

“ Can you introduce me to a physician who will manage 
that for me ? ” 

The banker looked at the speaker thoughtfully. 

“ Yob are ill ? ” 

“ Dying, they say,” replied Decker, calmly ; “ dying of 
consumption.” 

Money will do many things,” said the banker. 

“ But not what I want ? ” 

“ I do not say that. If it could bribe Death, there would 
be some very old men in the City of London,” said the 
banker, “ but though the bill must be finally met, it may 
perhaps be renewed meanwhile — it may be renewed.” 

As he spoke, he sat down and wrote a note, which he 
handed to Decker. 

“ Dr. Farmington, Cavendish Square,” he said, “ may 
be able to meet your views. Give him this note.” 

“ Thank you,” said Decker. 

“ Any other matter in which I can serve you ? ” 

“ No, sir.” 

“ Good-morning,” said the banker, bowing. “ Isaacs 
will send cheque-books and pass-books to your hotel. You 
have also letters to Bartons ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Neighbors of mine, and a most reliable firm. It is not 
every day, even in London, that accounts like yours are 
opened at the two great houses. I have ventured to give 
Farmington a hint on that score. You cannot take his head 
like an Oriental monarch should you fall ill ; but you can 
endow him with a subsidy as long as you live.” 

‘‘ Thank you, sir ; I shall act upon your hint.” 

They next had an interview witfi the Bartons, equally 
quiet and unpretentious on both sides, though Mr. Barton, 
it must be confessed, accepted the letter as if the bank as a 


284 


CRUEL LONDON. 


rule only dealt in millions, and knew nothing of smaller 
sums. Decker asked what were the two best Stocks in 
which to invest. 

“ United States Bonds and English Consols,’^ Mr. Bar- 
ton replied, paying a tribute to Demcer’s nationality by put- 
ting American scrip first. 

Next, they drove to Dr. Farmington, who promised 
Decker his full ten years, and more, on the condition of his 
advice being obeyed, and arranged for Decker to call next 
day to dinner, when they would talk as friends outside the 
restraints of the consulting-room. 

It was four o’clock by the time they reached High 
Street, Marylebone. Mr. Moses Aaron himself came to 
the door to receive them. “ Two customers,” he thought, 
“and for something more important than stuffed birds.” 

“We want to find Mr. Brayford,” said Keiman. 

“Certainly. Yes, by all means,” said Aaron, ringing 
the bell at the private door. “ That is the entrance to Mr. 
Brayford’s offices.” 

The summons was answered at once, and Eerman and 
Decker, threading the mazes of the JEmporium, which 
climbed to the very attics in relays of oak chests, vases, 
armor. Wardrobes, china, pictures, came at last to the door 
of Brayford & Co. Kerman rung and knocked. Bray- 
ford, with a quill pen behind his ear, bustled to the door 
and opened it. He looked at Kerman inquiringly, and 
curiously at Decker. 

“ Don’t you know me ? ” Kerman asked. 

“Know you! Yes,” exclaimed Brayford, the moment 
he heard Kerman’s voice ; “ of course I know, you.” 

He grasped Kerman’s hand heartily. 

“Though you are a good deal disguised,” he continued. 

“ Disguised? ” said Kerman;^ 

“ Beard and moustache ; why, you look like the pictures 
of one of our royal princes. But come in, come,” he saidj 
adding, “ This is your friend, I suppose?” 

“ Yes,” said Kerman, smiling. “I have brought him all 
1 the way from the United States to see you.” 

Brayford looked round as if waiting for the stranger’s 
name, but Kerman at that moment noticed the Wonner, 
who sat on a tall stool at a tall desk, engrossed in an ex- 
amination of a morning paper, from the front page of 
which he was making notes. 

“ Ah, Mr. said Kerman. 


CRUEL LONDON, 


285 


“ Mr. W.,” said the Wonner, with a vacant smile. 

“Yes, of course, Mr. W., how do you do ? ” 

“ Thank you, sir,” said Mr. W., nodding towards Bray- 
ford as much as to say, “ He’s the clever o-ne, it’s no. good 
talking to me.” 

When Kerman turned round, Tristram Decker was mak- 
ing* advances to a pretty little, boy who had toddled towards 
him, looking up at him with large blue eyes, something like 
his own, and long brown hair. 

“ How do, little one ? ” said Decker, stooping until he 
was on a level with it, face to face. 

“ Do, do,” replied the child, halting a few yards from 
him. 

I am very well;^’ said Decker, smiling. 

“ Wery well ?” said little Willie. 

“ Yes, just entered on a newlease of life with one of your 
English doctors, and I’m very fond of little children.” 

“ See Willie’s noo soos,” said the child, lifting a little 
'foot in a red hoot. 

“Very pretty,” said Decker; “come to me and let me 
feel it.” 

“ Ho, no,” replied little Willie. 

“Yes, yes,” said Decker; “T think you and I might be 
great friends; you are the first little boy I have spoken to 
in England,” 

“ Tttle boy,” said the child. 

“ Yes ; will you come and be my little boy ? ” ; . [. ; 

“Mamma’s ’ittle boy,” replied the child, his, blue; eyes . 
still fixed on Decker’s face. . . . 

“ Oh, you are mamma’s little boy?” ; 

Is, mamma’s.” ! 

“If your mamma is only as sweet as you are,’’ said 
Decker, looking up at Kerman and Brayford, “ your papa 
ought to be very proud of you both.” 

Brayford shrugged his shoulders, and sighed. > 

Little Willie advanced a step towards Decker, who took 
out his watch, and held it up. 

“ Come to me, and I’ll give you this.” 

“ Tick, tick,” said Willie. 

“Yes,” said Decker, undoing the chain, and putting it, 
watch and all, in a heap upon the floor, “ come and fetch it. ^ 
I will give it to you in return for the happy memories" you ‘ 
have awakened.” 


286 


CRUEL LONDON, 


Willie laughed and pretended to advance, but still held 
back. 

“I had a sister,” he said, turning toward Kerman; 
“she died when she was three years old ; she was the image 
of this little one. I had no other sister or brother. You 
can imagine that I was fond of the little girl. Strange I 
should find her counterpart in these eyes, that odd, grave 
little mouth, and this long brown hair.^' 

“ Willie’s mother is an American,” said Brayford ; but 
the observation escaped Decker, for at that moment Willie 
ran straight into his arms, and Decker kissed the little face, 
and then, lifting up the child, sat him on his knee and 
dropped the watch and chain into the boy’s lap. 

“Now you two old friends have your talk while we two 
new friends discuss the works of this chronometer.” 

While Decker opened his watch, and exhibited its 
machinery to the child, Brayford and Kerman sat down at 
the other end of the room. 

“And what’s the news, Brayford?” asked Kerman. 
“You are the first man I have sought out.” 

“The first man,” said Brayford, emphasizing “man.” 

“ Not the first woman ; no, Harry, no.” 

“ Whom have you seen ? ” 

“ Why, whom should I have seen ? ” 

“ Not her,” said Brayford ; “ though you look as happy 
as if you had, and further, as if you’d made it all up. Jack 
and Jill fell out upon a summer’s day, Jill was ill, and Jack 
he ran away ; but when the pie was open, the birds began 
to sing, and all went merrily along as happy as a king — 
eh ?” 

The Wonner laughed to himself as he spotted a ducal 
obituary notice, and remarked, — 

“ Oh, isn’t he clever ! ” 

“Just so,” said Kerman, laughing; “ I have seen her, 
Brayford, this very morning.” 

“ Who ? What, Miss Crosby ? ” asked Brayford, beam- 
ing. 

“ Yes.” 

“ And you know everything ? ” 

“ Everything.” 

“ And you’ve squared it ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ It’s all right between you ; and you k-now all ? ” 

“ Just so,” said Kerman. 


CRUEL LONDON. 


287 


“ Hurrah ! ” exclaimed Brayford. “ The bells shall 
ring, and the cats shall sing, and we won’t go home till 
morning, Mr. W. ! ” 

The Wonner turned round and smiled. 

“ A holiday, sir ! Away you go, sir. Enjoy yourself. 
Here’s a shilling for you ! ” 

The Wonner dropped from his seat. 

“Good as he’s clever,” he said, taking the shilling; 
“ clever as he’s good.” 

Nodding at Kerman, he took his hat and cloak from the 
wall, and trotted out of the room. 

“ Now, look here, Mr. Kerman,” said Brayford, “ you 
see that child ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

Willie was riding hard to “ Hickory bockery boo, a horse 
without a shoo.” The horse was Decker’s knee, and Decker 
was making a poetical and vocal accompaniment to the 
gallop. 

“You’ve a rival in my American friend. He’s a poet, 
too,” said Kerman. 

“ Ah, I’m only a doggrel-raonger,” said Brayford ; “ and 
I’ve got into the habit of amusing these two children, the 
two W.s — little Willie and the Wonner, both children, old 
W. the biggest child of the two. And did she tell you 
about forbidding the banns ? ” 

“ No, no; Jabez Thompson explained it.” 

“ Ah, that’s her child, the poor, dear love,” 

“ Whose child ? ” 

“ Mrs. Tom Sleaford’s, or Mrs. Gardner’s, whichever her 
name is. Ah, Mr. Kerman, one of the best and most love* 
able women in the world ; and clever, too. Lor’ bless you, 
she has the instincts and the tastes of the best lady in the 
land. Old Aaron, who is looked upon as a Great Mogul 
in the art way, he actually consults her on these things. 
We didn’t know what she could do until the other day. 
Here we were putting her to address envelopes, and all 
the time she was an artist, a painter, and musician. We 
didn’t know it, she’s so modest ; but one day she tried a 
piano, and another she said something about a picture that 
Aaron thought a great deal of, and he found her out. Mrs. 
Aaron found out her heart ; he found out her head ; and 
now, instead of sitting here writing envelopes, she’s in a 
room to herself, painting. She’s done Mr. Moses Aaron 
as one of the Apostles, and Mrs. Aaron a portrait. Well 


288 


CRUEL LONDON. 


they are splendid ; and weVe all got one ambition now, to 
get Aaron, the Apostle, into the Academy. And little 
Willie, there, is her child ? 

“ I owe you and her a debt of gratitude too deep for , 
words,” Kerman said. “ She shall have her picture in the 
Academy, if money can do it ; and if it can’t, she shall 
have an academy of her own,” 

Brayford smiled, as much as to say, “ The same dear, 
reckless, generous simpleton as of yore.” 

“Ko, I am not talking nonsense,” continued Kerman, 
noticing Brayford’s expression of incredulity and amuse- 
ment ; “ and I want to ask a favor of you, Brayford.” 

“Yes; ask and have, if it is in my power to comply.” 

“I want a private secretary.” 

“ You do ? ” 

“Yes. The work will be light, but I’ll make it up in 
salary.” 

Brayford laughed. 

“I’ve no salary now. You’ll double it, I suppose, as 
they say on the stage.” 

“ I will give you a thousand a year to begin with,” 
said Kerman ; “ and here’s your first half-year in advance.” 

He took a five hundred pound note from his pocket, 
and held it out to Brayord. 

“ Ko, no ; you’re joking,” he said. “ It’s a property 
note — a Bank of Elegance, eh ? Ah, you’ve come back a 
wag ! ” 

“ Brayford,” said Kerman, gravely, “ you don’t want to 
insult me?” 

“ Heaven forbid ! ” 

“ Listen, then. First take that note.” 

Brayford took it, and looked anxiously at Kerman. 

“I am a rich man. The note is no more to me than a 
sovereign used to be. I liked you in the old days. I am 
under an obligation to you now that I can never repay, 
and I like you none the less. Will you be my friend, my 
secretary, steward, or whatever you like to call it, ? ” 

“ Will I ? ’’ exclaimed, Brayford, rising. “ My dear 
Mr. Kerman, I’d have been that to you for fivepence a 
year for that matter, if you couldn’t have afforded any 
more, and I could have lived on it and pensioned Mr. W.” 

“ It is a bargain, then ? ” 

“ It is ; yes, indeed it is.” 

They had not heard a tap at a door in a corner of the 


CRUEL LONDON. 


289 


room opposite the one at which they had entered. Nor had 
they noticed the door open, and a woman standing there, a 
palette and brushes in her hand. Her black eyes were 
fixed upon Decker and the child on. his knee. They only 
knew she was there when she dropped the palette. Then 
they saw her transfixed, spellbound. 

“ Hush, don’t notice her,” said Brayford. ‘‘ She is like 
that sometimes.” 

“ Mamma ! ” cried little Willie, joyfully, and scram- 
bling from his imaginary horse to the floor. 

Decker turned his face in the direction indicated by 
the child’s glance and cry. 

“Great God!” he exclaimed, springing to his feet. 
“ Caroline ! ” 

He rushed towards her, but not in time to catch her in 
his arms. She had fallen at his feet. 


BOOK VIII. 


CHAPTER I. 

THE GOLDEN KEY. 

Blow, bitter eastern wind ! Tristram Decker cares no 
longer to lengthen his days ! His dream is over. He does 
not want those extra ten years of life. He will go no more 
to Cavendish square. Even the five years allotted to him 
by the American physicians are now more than he asks. 
One year alone may fufil his desire. Tear down the 
blossoms, shrivel the young leaves, unnatural wind, blowing 
upon the tender buds of May ! Thy sting is not so keen as 
the poisoned tooth which has lacerated the heart of Tristram 
Decker ! 

The biting east wind cut its way through the London 
streets just as the metropolis had put on its summer gear. 


290 


CRUEL LONDON. 


It blew as if it came from the heart of an iceberg. It 
sent the dust whirling through every avenue in sharp, 
wounding gusts. Mayfair hurried home in its carriages to- 
put on its sealskin jackets. St. Giles crouched in its rags 
by fireless hearths and beneath merciless archways. The 
trees in the parks and squares shivered in the cruel tempest. 

The searching remorselessness of the wind made havoc 
with the consumptive and the weak, and it pinched the lips 
and shrivelled the faces of the strong. The apple-blossoms 
in the suburbs fell in showers from the trees. A shivering 
ripple ran along the river. Tristram Decker felt a chilly 
spasm as this winter-in-summer wind impregnated the atmos- 
phere of his luxurious chambers in Pall Mall East. 

He had insisted upon having his own rooms and living 
by himself. Kerman had remonstrated. Decker had 
replied, “Your path is strewn with roses ; I will not put thorns 
into it ”. Decker had answered Kerman that it was best 
for all of them that he should live his own life in London ; 
Kerman his. “ [ am Kemesis, ” he had said, in his 
dramatic way “ you are Good Fortune. To know that you 
are happy in your love will give me a passing pleasure’; my' 
everlasting disappointment and sorrow would be a daily 
blight upon your happiness ” 

And so it came to pass that, within a week after their 
arrival in London, Decker had his own rooms and his own 
plans apart from his companion ; and the last day of May 
finds him entering upon his first experience of the English 
climate, which enables the historian to impress upon the 
reader the condition of Decker’s feelings when describing 
the cruelties of the east wind as bearing no comparison 
for bitterness with the wounds which his pride, his love, 
and his hopes have received. 

To him enters on this day of the triumph of the east 
wind a stranger, a pale, well-dressed man of forty or fifty, a 
courtly person, with cold gray eyes and white hands. 

“ jfionsieur Favart, I believe ?” 

“ At your service sir.” 

“ Be seated.” 

Monsieur Favart, his hat and eane in hand, sat near the 
fire in response to Decker’s invitation. The American in a 
warm velvet dressing gown, was engaged at a desk near the 
fireplace. 

“ You are strongly recommended to me by Baron Nathan 
the banker.” 


CRUEL LONDON. 


291 


Monsieur Favart inclined his head affirmatively ; Mon- 
sieur Favart did not waste words. 

“ He tells me you have seen service under several govern- 
ments.’’ 

Monsieur Favart bowed again. 

“ As a spy.” 

Sir ! ” exclaimed monsieur, “ the baron did not send 
me here to be insulted.” 

He rose from his seat. 

“No” said Decker, unmoved, “but that we may 
thoroughly understand each other. Don’t be offended. 
Monsieur Favart.” 

“ Monsieur is somewhat coarse in his speech,” replied 
Favart still standing. “ I am not used to that mode of 
address.” 

“ Pardon me, I am a citizen of the United States, and 
over there we call things by their right names, and don’t 
palaver about business. Pray be seated ; put your hat nad 
stick down. If I am uncouth I am rich and I can substi- 
tute courtesy with gold.” 

Monsieur Favart put his hat and cane upon the floor, and 
resumed his seat. 

“You are a Jew ?” 

“I was born in Brussels ; I have lived in all countries.” 

“ You know London well ?” 

“ Every inch of it.” 

“ The baron tells me that, like the Swiss mercenaries of 
France- and Rome, you don’t care much for whom you fight 
until you are enlisted, engaged, and paid, and then you are 
devoted heart and soul to your chief.” 

“ Monsieur le Baron has been frank.” 

“ You have served under him ? ” 

“ Many times.” 

“ You like to continue in his favor ? ” 

“ That is true.” 

“ He is anxious that you should serve me. 

Monsieur bowed. 

“ I want a slave.” 

“ Sir !” exclaimed Monsieur Favart,“ it is plain you do not 
want me.” 

“ I want,” continued Decker, “a shrewd, clever, unscrupu- 
lous man, gentlemanly in style, accustomed to all societies, 
to all countries — a keen, shrewd person, who has had expe- 
rience of criminals of all classes, from the king on his throne 


292 


CRUEL LONDON. 


vybo declares an unholy war, to the common thief who picks 
a pocket ; I want such a man to be my slave, to hunt for me 
in human hives, to track down a thief and lay him bound at 
my feet. Such a man can count upon the highest pay that 
spy or agent even received from king or commoner. Look! 

Decker opened a drawer in a safe that stood by his elbow. 
It was full of sovereigns. He opened another which was 
full of notes. He opened another that flashed the radiance 
of diamonds. 

“ I will be your slave,” said Favart. 

“ Very well,’ replied Decker, closing the drawers ; “ fix 
your own terms: don’t be afraid ; I mean business.” 

“ Four hundred pounds a month.” 

“Make it eight,” said Decker. 

“ And expenses ? ” 

“ Certainly.” 

“ Monsieur is too good ; I have only one condition.” 

“Name it.” 

“We discharge the word “ spy” from our vocabulary.” 

“ Very well, to me you are henceforth Monsieur Favart ; 

I am Tristram Decker, your chief. Is that agreeable?” 

“ Most agreeable.” 

“ You will live here.” 

Favart bowed. 

“ I have ordered rooms to be furnished for you above 
my own. Anything you wa^it that you don’t find there, 
order and charge to your expenses, on account of which I 
have paid two thousand pounds to your credit at Nathan’s.” 

“ Sir, you are more than princely.” 

“ I can afford it. Now to business. On the date set down 
in this summary of events,” said Decker, handing him a 
paper, “William Graham Denton, a distinguished citizen of 
the Southern States of America, was said to have been 
killed at the Lingham railway-depot. I want the facts, par-, 
ticulars of the inquest and burial. A young man named 
Sleaford — Tom Sleaford, an Englishman — and a girl, the 
daughter of Mr.Denton, traveled with the deceased. This 
Tom Sleaford lured the girl away to a house he had in the 
Vale of Essam ; she was ill, suffering from the shock of her 
father’s death. One day he took her thence under the pre- 
tence of marrying her. She thought he took her to London. 
It is suspected that he took her to the nearest large city, and 
there is a doubt whether he married her or not ; if he did, it 
was a civil contract at a place called a Registry Office. I 


CRUEL LONDON. 


93 


want to know whether he married her, and where, and you 
mu!>t get me a copy of the certificate. If it is necessary to 
employ other detective agencies than your own, employ 
them. Tiiere is a woman named Migswood who lived at The 
Cottage ; it is thought she is in London. She can assist 
you. Let me know where she is,” 

Decker paused, and sighed deeply. 

“ You are ill,” said Favart. 

“ Don’t mind me. If I am ill, know that your successful 
accomplishment of my wishes is the best medicine I can 
have.” 

“ Sympathy, as well as interest, bind me to your service.” 

“ Begin, then ; let me have all this information within the 
week.” 

Monsieur Favart had no sooner left the room than a 
short, thickset, round-headed man entered. 

“ Davings ! Ah, I’m glad to see you,” said Decker ; “ it 
does one good to see an American face.” 

“ Thank you, general,” replied Davings, turning in his 
mouth a quid of tobaco. “ I went to the hotel ; they sent 
me here.” 

“ When did you arrive ? ” 

“ At Liverpool, yesterday.” 

“ I want you to take charge of this place and look after 
me, look after my clothes, order my dinners, see to my 
. drinks ” 

“ And boss around generally, as I used to for Judge 
Smithers in Frisco ? ” 

“ Jugt so.” 

“ Keep my mouth shut, my eyes open, and grease the 
wheels of life.” 

“ That’s it, to the letter.” 

“ Well, when’ll I begin ? ” 

“Now. See the housekeeper; she has my instructions.” 

Davings rolled out of the room as if he were treading 
the deck of a vessel, and disappeared. 

“ I shall get things into shape soon,” said Decker ; “ it 
is time the lawyer came. The sight of Davings was wel- 
come. I shall have decent food now, and proper drink. 
While I live. I’ll live.” 

He drew his dressing-gown about him and walked to the 
windows. The dust of Pall Mall was whirling up around 
the statue of George the Third. His bronzed majesty look- 
ed like an officer saluting in the smoke of a field-day. 


294 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“ Come in,” he said, in response to a knock at the door. 

The servant announced “ Mr. Sparcoe.” 

“ Good morning,” said Mr. Sparcoe, who advanced 
with his hand behind his back, as if he were in pain. 

Decker bowed. 

“ Sparcoe is my name. Sparcoe, of “ Sparcoe & Bland 
Westminster.” 

Mr. Sparcoe was a small man with a nose that threat- 
ened, if the owner lived long enough, to rival the frame of 
Bardolph. Black hair clustered in curls about his forehead ; 
he pulled nervously at his thick, black beard, and mous- 
tache. He had black, bright eyes, and a mouth that be- 
tokened a certain geniality of mind. 

“ Pm a funny man,” he said. “ You will excuse me ; if 
you will let your servant bring me a little drop of whisky. 
I’ll thank you kindly.” 

Decker rang and ordered the whisky. 

“ Thank you,” said Sparcoe, when he had smacked his 
lips over the liquor. “ I’m a funny man ; but you’ll excuse 
me. I’m sure, when I tell you I’ve had my back broken in 
three places, and my ribs cracked in all directions.” 

Decker looked at him inquiringly. 

“ Well, not exactly broken, but worse ; if it had been 
broken I shouldn’t have been here, and a lot of trouble 
would have been saved to a great many ; for I’m a funny 
man, and not being able to ride any longer, it makes me 
irritable, and I must have my own way — must — it is life 
and death that I have it. But to the business which 
brought me here — a deed of gift I believe ? ” 

“ That’s so,” said Decker. 

“ Will you oblige me with a sheet of paper,” said Mr. 
Sparcoe, rising, one hand upon his back, the other fidget- 
ing with his beard, which he seemed every now and then 
to be plucking out by the roots. 

“ Thank you,” said Sparcoe, re-seating himself at a blot- 
ting pad and paper, and taking up a pen. “ I’m a funny 
man ; though I was never at college, I can always think 
ever so much better with a pen in my hand and foolscap 
under my nose. Deed of gift. Your name, sir, in full ? ” 
Tristram Decker.” 

“ Tristram Decker,” wrote Sparcoe, in a large, firm hand, 
“ late of the United States, I believe? ” 

“Yes.” 


CRUEL LONDON. 295 

“ American citizen, and now of Pall Mall East, in the 
city of Westminster, in the county of Middlesex.” 

“ My time is valuable, Mr. Sparooe. I beg you will not 
detain me longer than necessary.” 

“Your time is not more valuable than mine,” said 
Sparcoe, with a smile that showed a set of teeth that look^ 
ed the whiter for the glowing face. “ I dare say you are 
thinking he is a funny man, and so he is, is Ellis William 
Sparcoe, I can tell you, and I don’t know that there is any 
other man in London who could have got me out of my 
office expect Baron Nathan ; we’ve been in at the death 
together many a time when there has been a full field, and 
not six up at the last; but I forget, you don’t understand 
fox-hunting in America. 

“We understand business,” said Decker. 

“YeSj by George, you do! I ask your pardon, Mr. 
Decker ; it is a just rebuke. I’ll run this off in no time ; it 
is a gift, donatio mortis causa^ as the law calls it. Who is 
the recipient? ” 

“ Caroline Virginia Denton, otherwise Caroline Virginia 
Sleaford, or Gardner.” . 

“ Married woman ? ” 

“ I don’t know at present.” 

“ Ah, sufficient if we identify her properly 

This point settled, the next question was the property. 

“ The residue of my estate at my death, and one million 
sterling in the meantime, in the bonds of the Decker Gulch 
mines. 

“Decker mines,” remarked Sparcoe. “Ah, yes, read a 
description of them yesterday in the Telegraph. What a 
property ! They say the principal mine is worth a pound 
a minute. By George, you are rich ! ” 

“ And yet you say your time is as valuable as mine.” 

“ You are the Decker in question, then? ” 

“ I am.” 

“ Well, you will say I’m a funny man,” said Sparcoe, 
still writing. “ I shouldn’t care to have so much.” 

“ In regard to the gift prior to my death, to be made at 
once, to-morrow, I want the lady to think it is from her 
father, a sum restored to her by a Government agent in the 
United States, the North having destroyed his estates 
during the war. Do you understand ? ” 

“ She is to think this money does not come from you ? ” 
“ Yes.” 


296 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“Won’t she suspect when it is in Decker Gulch 
Bonds ?’\ ' 

“ She is not of a suspicious nature, and the bonds will 
be converted by you through i^^athan’s, and the money de- 
posited to her credit.” 

“Yes, that will do,” said Sparcoe, rising. “ The deed 
shall be sent down for your signature in a couple of hours. 
Bland will do the suaviter business about the source of the 
gift ; he has a smooth way with him that will overcome 
any doubts. I’m not good at a lie, I should be.sure to let 
it out. When you’ve lived half your life :n the hunting- 
held, you get into the habit of calling a spade a spade. Oh, 
my back, my back ! ” ^ 

While he was still speaking, Mr. Sparcoe was crawling, 
to the door, with his left hand on his back, and his right 
swinging his hat as if that particular action aided his loco- 
motion. ’ .1 

“ Good morning,” he said, with a groan ; “ if you had 
seen me ten years ago, you wouldn’t believe I could ever 
have limped in this way. Ah, well, the Lord Almighty has 
been very good to me for all that.” 

“ Decker smiled when the next moment he heard Spar- 
coe exclaim in a loud voice to the servant, who had evi- 
dently been moved to render him some assistance, 

“Don’t touch me! Damme, do you think I can^t walk; 
get but with you ! ” 

The carriage is at the door, sir,” said the servant. 

“ Send Davings to my bedroom.” 

While he dressed, Mr. Decker gave some instructions to 
Davings in regard to dinner, and then, handing him a card, 
said, — 

“ I have written down three addresses ; tell the coach- 
man to drive to those places in the order I have put them.” 

“Yes, general,” said Davings, turning his quid and 
rolling downstairs before his master. 


CRUEL LONDON. 


297 


CHAPTER II. . 
decker’s slaves. 

Down Pall Mall, by Trafalgar Square, amidst a crowd 
of dust, pa^t the picturesque sentinels at the Horse Guards, 
whirling along with the east wind down Parliament Street, 
Decker’s carriage pulled up at the Palace Hotel, where 
Tristram Decker was introduced for the first time to Miss 
Crosby. 

Mr. Thompson, the Lincolnshire heiress and Kerman 
were waiting for his coming before they ordered luncheon 
to be served. He had promised to join them, 

“I am so glad to see you,” said Jane, beaming upon 
him -a genial welcome. “ This is my friend and guardian 
I may say, Mr. Jabez Thompson.” 

Mr. Jabez Thompson bowed stiffly to the American, 
whose poetic aspect, long brown hair, and sad face rather 
awed the Lincolnshire sportsman. 

“ I have to apologize for delaying the pleasure of making 
your friendship. Miss Crosby, but I have had a bitter dis- 
aj^pointment since I came to London, which has occupied 
me in various ways ; and, besides, I am an invalid, as my 
friend Kerman will have told you.” 

“ Yes, he’s told me all about you — indeed he talked about 
nobody else ; if I dared I should be jealous of you,” replied 
Jane. 

“ Bring up the luncheon,” said Thompson, addressing a 
servant who entered for orders. 

“ Ah, Miss Crosby,” said Decker, “ you will never have 
cause to be jealous ; you don’t know the depth of Kerman’s 
devotion.” 

Jane blushed at the thought of her own want of that 
particular virtue in a lover. The first Sunday after Christ- 
mas was continually cropping up in her memory. 

“ I think I do,” she said, looking at Kerman. “ I do 
believe you men are more constant than us poor women ! 
But you must not forget that you were born the stronger, 
and that we have to carry upon our poor shoulders the 
curse of Paradise.” 


298 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“Yes, yes,’' said Decker, “and we must do women the 
justice to remember that the tempter was the devil and that 
the devil is of our sex.” 

“Luncheon,” said Thompson ; “I’ll lead the way.” 

They followed into the next room, and Decker sat near 
Jane. 

“ Did John tell you we are all going to Paris together ? ” 
she asked. 

“ No ; he does not tell me all his secrets now.” 

“ He says you are so much absorbed in business.” 

“ It is true.” 

“ Ah, great wealth is a great responsibility.” 

“ And a great power.” 

“ John tells me you believe it can command all things.” 

“ I used to think so. I wish it could buy the oblivion 
of events we dislike. If it could blot out of memory, out of 
existence, two or three black years and leave a clean white 
page to be filled as we wish, then what a power it would be 
for weal or woe ! ” 

“ You have some great sorrow, John told me so, let us 
help you to forget it ; Mr. Decker come with us to Paris.” 

“ No, it is impossible; thank you. I have set myself 
some work to do which will occupy me until the end of the 
year, possibly ; and then I shall take a long rest.” 

“ Mr. Decker, you are not drinking,” said Thompson, 
from the head of the table. 

“Thank you, Mr. Thompson, I am getting through 
nicely,” said the American; “the conversation of your 
ward 18 more sparkling than any champagne.” 

“ Oh, John,” said Miss Crosby, “ you didn’t tell me your 
friend was what Lincolnshire would call a gallant.” 

“ I said he was a poet, my dear,” Kerman replied, as he 
helped himself to plovers’ eggs. 

“ A poet I ” said Thompson to himself, “ a lunatic.” 

“Kerman libels the laureate. Miss Crosby, when he 
calls me a poet. But let us talk of your plans of pleasure. 
When do you go to Paris ? ” 

“ When is it, John ? ” asked Miss Crosby. 

“Ask Jabez Thompson,” John replied ; “ he’s the boss, 
as we should call him in America.” 

At present,” said the lawyer, attacking a beefsteak 
which had been specially cooked for him because he said he 
hated gimcracks, “ at present. I shall be worse than a no- 
body soon, I expect, aged and turned out to grass for the 


CRUEL LONDON, 


299 


rest of my days, the retired performer, like a picture of that 
old winner of the Derby we saw yesterday.” 

“ You don’t call that answering a question, do you?” 
asked Miss Crosby, who was eating her luncheon with the 
relish of a Lincolnshire appetite. 

“ Oh, about Paris ? ” said Thompson, wipihg his face 
with his napkin; “we shall go on Wednesday.” 

“ It is a fine city, Paris ? ” observed Decker, looking at 
the lawyer. 

“ Fine enough for that matter. I’ve never stopped there 
long. I generally go over to France to see the French 
Derby run ; its a place I soon tire of. Seems to me that 
Frenchmen are always thinking of going to work, and never 
getting beyond an eating-house.” 

“ Come with us Tristy, old man,” said Kerman. 

“ Impossible,” replied Decker. 

“You men will like to have a chat and a smoke,” said 
Miss Crosby, rising. “ I shall go into the other room and 
write some letters.” 

“ And you’ll excuse i “My partner 



has a horse entered 


Decker, and I 


have an appointment at the Westminster Club. I’ll say 
good -day, sir.” 

Decker, who, having opened the door for Miss Crosby, 
was standing when Mr. Thompson addressed him, bowed, 
and the sporting lawyer left the room in an opposite direc- 
tion. 

“ Modest fellow, that,” observed Kerman ; “ his partner 
has a.horse entered for the Derby ! Why, it’s his own horse, 
and it’s second favorite. Any other man would have 
thought that something to brag about. The race is run on 
Wednesday; we are going to Paris on Thursday.” 

“ Fine old English gentleman, I suppose, eh ? ” 

“ Yes, a good old specimen.” 

“Don’t like him,” said Decker, carelessly, adding quickly, 
when he saw that Kerman was disappointed at the remark : 
“ excuse me for saying so, old boy, we are used to say what 
we think to each other.” 

“ Why don’t you like him ? ” 

“ Because he doesn’t like me. But that’s nothing. Look 
here. Jack, old man, I’m going to drive to Lancaster Gate, 
Hyde Park ; will you come? I want to show you something, 
and your friend, Mr. Brayford, is to meet me.” 


300 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“Do you want to go now — at once?” asked Kerman, 
handing him a case of cigars and a light. 

“At once,’^ said Decker, commencing to smoke. 

“ All right ; I’ll be with you in a minute.” 

Kerman knocked at the door through which Miss Crosby 
had passed.' Decker could hear him say : 

“ Jane, Decker wants me to drive with him to see some- 
thing ; business, my dear. I’ll be back very soon.” 

“ ^ery well, John,” was the reply, and something which 
sounded like a hurried kiss brought Kerman back to his 
friend. 

“ Oh, Tristy ! Tristy ! ” exclaimed Kerman, “ I wish you 
were as happy as I am : can’t it be managed, dear old 
friend ? ” 

“ You told that dear girl of yours that I am a poet. If to 
be a dreamer, a sentimentalist, to have a heart torn with 
jealousy, hatred, remorse, revenge, is to be a j:K)et, I am that 
unhappy thing, J ack. If I were a philosopher, or a clod, or 
something between your friend Thompson and a nigger, 
there might be hope ; but I am Tristram Decker, and the 
leopard does not change its spots.” 

Kerman shrugged his shoulders. 

“ But come along. Jack, be happy yourself ; don’t mind 
me ; I shall amuse myself.” 

They were driven to a handsome house at Lancaster Gate. 
A matronly woman received them. She said Mr. Brayford 
was writing in the library. 

“ Good ; show us meanwhile into that little room by the 
conservatory.” 

“ The morning-room ? ” 

“ Yes,” said Decker. 

“ Sit down, Kerman,” said Decker. “ Madam, when I 
ring it will be for Mr. Brayford.” 

“Do you like this room? ” , 

“Yes,” said Kerman. 

“ Come this way.” 

He led his friend into a winter garden, the atmosphere 
laden with the perfume of a cloud of exotic blooms. The 
conservatory opened upon a drawing-room, panelled in 
quilted satin, and furnished in ebony and gold. They passed 
through corridors lined with costly paintings. They came 
to a dining-room, the picture of old English elegance and 
simplicity. 

“We won’t disturb Brayford in the library,” said Decker, 


CRUEL LONDON. 


301 


leading^ the way to the morning-room. “ What do you think 
of the house ? ” 

“ It is a palace,” said Kerman ; “ what’s the meaning of 
it?” 

“ A penitent Federalist, who took part in the war against 
her father, has settled it upon William Graham Denton’s 
daughter, as some return for the loss and misery that cruel 
business has caused her.” 

“ Indeed ! ” said Kerman. “ I know that Federalist, the 
dear fellow ! ” 

“ But you must not know him. Jack,” said Decker, 
earnestly ; “ that is my secret.” 

“ I will not let it out,” replied Kerman, putting out his 
hand, which Decker gripped with unusual warmth. 

“ It is a great blessing, anyhow, to have a friend like 
you. Jack,” he said ; “ we will ring for Brayford now.” 

Brayford, in gray trousers, a frock coat, and plum-colored 
necktie that hid itself beneath his stubby beard, entered, 
hat and gloves in his hands. 

“ Good-morning, gentlemen,” he said, with a solemn air. 

“ How is Mrs. Gardner to-day ? ” Decker asked. 

“ Better, sir, much better, I am glad to say ; and the 
toys you sent to Master Willie ; well, there he’s a’ridy-cock- 
horsing to Banbury-crossing as if he were a little royal 
prince.” : 

“ And you have been over the house, Mr. Brayford ? ” 

“ Yes, sir ; it’s something too lovely. I feel as if I were 
dreaming.” 

“ And is Mr. Moses Aaron willing to be one of the 
trustees ? ” 

“Willing!” said Brayford, “he is overcome with the 
honor of it.” 

“ Then you will kindly tell your solicitor to complete 
the settlement to-morrow, for the American Minister is 
anxious that Mrs. Gardner should come here at once and 
live in a style worthy of her position and the wealth which 
her father was deprived of through the war.” 

“Yes, sir, thank you. I’ll do so at once; and The 
Wonner, Mr. Decker, he prefers to continue where he is 
and go on cutting out the obituaries, and Mrs. Aaron she 
will pay him a pound a week regular as arranged, and I 
shall visit him two or three times a week, please God, and 
the business will go on all right, I’m sure.” 

Decker looked, impatiently at the door. 


802 


CRUEL LON DOM. 


“Yes, good-day, sir, ox au revoir. I will see that the 
deed is ready by the time named.” 

“ I want you to lend me this secretary of yours,” said 
Decker, when Brayford had gone. 

“ Do what you like with him,” said Kerman ; “ I’ve 
nothing for him to do.” 

“ Come, then, we will go to Gilton’s, the American 
bank. He promised to procure for me, from a friend of 
his, a colored butler of most reliable character, whom he 
would induce a friend of his to part with, under the inter 
esting circumstances I put before him. I want to know if 
he has been successful. The Federalist who is interested 
in Denton’s daughter learns that an old favorite colored 
woman, who was a nurse in. Denton’s family, is in New 
York, and he has cabled for her. His idea is to give the 
lady a pleasant surprise.” 

They left the carriage at Gilton’s, ascended a narrow 
staircase, and entered a sort of counting-house, where several 
United States’ citizens were smoking, and poring over 
files of American newspapers. 

“ Step in here, sir,” said Gilton, chewing the end of a 
cigar, which he was also smoking. “ It is all O. K., as 
these Britishers say ; you can have Julius Brutus when 
you like.” 

Thank you, that’s good,” said Decker. “ Any news 
from New York ? ” 

“ The critter’s on her way ; steamer’ll be in latter end 
of next week.” 

“ That’s smart,” said Decker. 

“ The way Giltons do their business, general.” 

“ You will find me liberal,” said Decker. 

“ Guess I know that well enough.” 

“ I wish you good day,” said Decker. 

“ The same to you, general,” said Gilton. 

“ I’m going home now. Jack,” said Decker; “ you want 
to go to your hotel ? ” 

“Yes, and I’ll walk; you’ve put my head in such a 
whirl with your kind thoughts, and your smartness, and 
your strange ways, and one thing and another, that a 
walk will do me good,” 

“ As you wish ; acquaint me with your movemeilts. 
This wind is sharp enough to shave a man. Good-by.” 

“Pall Mall,” he said to the coachman, who smiled 
because Decker pronounced the words as they were spelt; 


CRUEL LONDON. 303 

and Decker’s chestnut dashed up to the door before Ker- 
man had crossed Trafalgar Square. 

“ Hain’t’e a stunner ! ” said the coachman to his son, 
who officiated as footman, when Decker had dismissed him 
for the remainder of the day, saying, — 

“ I shall not want your father or yourself until to-mor- 
row. Davings wait on me : go and enjoy yourself ; here 
are a few dollars to do it with,” 

“ Hain’t ’e a stunner, ’Ennery James; a hexample to 
we Britishers, as 'e calls us, though he do say ‘Paul Maul,’ 
and calls two arf sovs dollards. ’Ennery James, we air in 
luck ; we’ll dress ourselfs hup and go to the club, that we 
will.’ 

‘ Ennery James, and his father thus being off duty, it 
devolved upon Davings to wait upon the general, aa he 
called Decker, for the remainder of the day and niglit. 

“ Bring me a champagne cocktail, Davings, my man,” 
said Decker, gasping for breath as he leaned against the 
mantelshelf of the room in which he lived, wrote and ate ; 
for he was content to occupy only a couple of rooms, with 
bath and ante-chamber en suite. 

Davings had already converted the ante-room into a 
sort of private American bar, in which he concocted iced 
drinks of various kinds, and kept a stock of champagne 
always cold. 

“ Guess you ain’t looking well,” said Davings, with 
that easy familiarity which is characteristic of the relation- 
ship that generally exists between an American gentleman 
and his confidential servant. 

“ I am tired.” 

“ Why don’t you rest ? What call have you got to go 
worrying around like a Wall Street broker; you don’t 
want to rhake no money ? ” said Davings, handing him a 
tempting looking glass of pale, ruby-colored liquor. 

“ No, I want to spend it, Davings,’ replied Decker, 
drinking. 

“ Well, I guess you’ve got to the right place, for cuss 
me if they don’t charge you for lookin’’ at a store in this 
town.” 

“ That’s as good a copktail as I ever drank, Davings.” 

“Well, the wine’s good; I’ll say that for these Brit- 
ishers, they sell tiptop wine,” replied Davings, tossing up 
the empty glass and catching it. 

“ What time did I say for dinner ? ” 


304 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“ Six ; and I guess, general, a gentleman need have a 
gold mine if he’s to eat oysters every day in this town, 
and when you’ve paid for them their weight in copper, 
blame me if they don’t taste of the metal itself.” 

“ Cable to New York for a regular supply of Blue- 
points, and anything else that’s useful, Davings, and don’t 
trouble me about trifles ; there are three steamers a week 
from New York ; I want to live in London as if I were in 
New York, with all the luxuries procurable here in ad- 
tion.” 

“Yes, sir: and it’s a. pity you can’t do closer justice to 
them ; but no doubt your appetite will get better, and I 
guess you’ll be having friends to help you.” 

“ That will do, Davings.” 

“ Right, general,” was the quick response, as Davings 
sheered off with a lurch to starboard. 

“ Davings ! ” 

“General,” said Davings, pulling himself together, and 
standing at attention. 

“ Is chewing a great comfort to you ? ” 

“ No ; and it’s a cursed dirty habit.” 

“ Give it up, Davings ; give it up.” 

It’s given up general.” 

Davings went away to bring the dinner. Tristram 
Decker opened his letters. There was one from Mr. Spar- 
coe, the proclaimed funny man, who appeared to be also a 
clever man ; for he wrote to say that he had delayed the 
deed of gift on his own responsibility to suggest the addi- 
tion of a clause settling the money upon the recipient, ex- 
clusively for her own use, tied up in such a way that no 
other person could touch it. Decker approved, and filled up 
a telegraphic form to that effect, giving two names as trus- 
tees if required, and appointing a time for signing the docu- 
ment. Sparcoe had earned the respect of Decker for this 
bit of worldly and legal thoughtfulness. Decker employed 
Brayford’s lawyer for the work of settling the house at Lan- 
caster Gate. He did not choose that the situation should 
be commanded by any single firm. Jeremiah Sleaford 
wrote, in his own hand, to thank Tristram Decker, Esq., 
for his deposit of five hundred pounds, and appointing a 
meeting at the West End Bank of Deposit. A note from 
the American Embassy stated that they had arranged 
with Scotland Yard to place a smart and discreet detective 
at his service during his short stay in London, to inspect 


CRUEL LONDON. 


305 


the city, and inquire into its criminal and other phases of 
life. 

By the time Decker had finished dinner, and drawn 
his chair to the fire on this chilly announcement of the 
English summer, Mr. Topper Wingfield was announced. 

“ From Scotland Yard,” said a sporting-looking gentle- 
man,' with mutton-chop whiskers but an otherwise closely 
shaven face. 

“Yes ; take a seat.” 

“ I’m placed at yore service as long as yo want me,” 
said Mr. Topper Wingfield, with a smack of the Lancashire 
dialect in his speech and a certain Northern brusqueness in 
his manner. 

“ You know who I am ” 

“ T. W.’s on it,” replied Mr. Wingfield. 

Mr. Wingfield tapped his prominent nose with the fore- 
finger of his right hand. It was a remarkable nose, an 
organ which, regarded from a friendly point of view, 
looked as if it was fully entitled to the confidence which its 
owner reposed in it. A stout yet pliable nose, it looked 
straight ahead : it did not turn up, it did not turn down ; 
it was not thin and inquisitive ; it did not end in a sharp 
point : it was a capable nose, that appeared to be looking 
into things always ; not a mere inquisitive, prying nose, but 
an investigating nose, a judicial, inquest-loving nose. It had 
saved Mr. Topper Wingfield in many a trying case, under 
many singular and difficult circumstances. No wonder he 
patted it in a confidential and affectionate way; no wonder 
his two small eyes, planted rather closely at the base of it, 
looked down admiringly upon it from their cool, shady 
depths. It was a most requisitive, catethetical, scrutini- 
zing, discriminative, probative, judicial nose. Nobody had 
had better evidence of this reliability than Mr. Wingfield, 
to whom that accurate and profound nose was a familiar 
adviser and friend, known to him as “ T. W.,” his second 
self, and of which his remark, “ T. W.’s on it,” was by 
Scotland Yard always understood to mean that the ques- 
tion under discussion was received as clear in demonstra- 
tion and comprehension by Mr. Topper Wingfield and the 
honorable member already described. 

“ Oh, T. W.’s on it, is he ?” remarked Decker, lighting 
a cigar ; “ is that T. W. ? tapping his own nose. 

“That’s T. W.,” said Wingfield, laying his own fore- 
finger upon his own proboscis. 


306 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“Very well, Mr. Wingfield; if you and T. W. can 
spare half an hour, we will come to business.” 

“ Kay, there’s no ‘ if ’ about it ; I’m your servant, sir, 
in all that’s reasonable and discreet : such were my com- 
mands ; so you’ve gotten to give orders, and I’ve gotten to 
obey.” 

“Is that it?” 

“ That’s it. Minister down at Embassy said you’d be 
sure to act liberal in the way of expenses and what not ; so 
I leave all that to you. And now sir, if yo please, drive 
on.” 

“ Do^you smoke ? ” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“ And drink ? ” 

“ I do.” 

“Will you help yourself?” 

“ Thank you.” 

“ You are not a Londoner ? ” 

“ I’m Lancashire.” 

“You seem to have as many dialects in England as we 
have in America ? ” 

“ Yo musn’t reckon to beat us in everything.” 

“ Ko, so I perceive.” 

Decker smiled. He liked his new acquaintance at once. 

“ Have you been long in the London police force ? ” 

“ Twenty years.” 

“You must have had some strange experiences.” 

“ Ah, you may say that.” 

“What is the most remarkable case in which you were 
ever engaged ? ” 

“ The Longville poisoning case.” 

“ Poisoning ? ” said Decker. “ Was it a murder ? ” 

“ If there ever was one ; and the poisoners are walking 
about now.” 

“ How is that ? ” 

“ The jury wouldn’t convict ; the medical evidence was 
conflicting.” 

“ What was the case ? ” 

“A French lady of position poisoned her husband; 
there was a go-between in the shape of a lady companion ; 
and the lady had a lover who was a foreign doctor.” 

“Yes, well?” 

“ The two women were tried ; they got off.” 

“ Wliy ? ” 


CRUEL LONDON. 


307 


“ The doctors couldn’t agree whether, the man being in 
a peculiar state of health, some medicine which he had 
taken, not being a poison in a criminal sense, had done his 
business or not. They couldn’t get at the doctor, though 1 
make no doubt be doctored him into the state of health that 
was necessary. He was the cheekiest lot I ever come 
across ; a regular knowing old Mossoo as you could wish to 
see. They called him as a witness, and under cross-exami- 
nation he said he would undertake to poison anybody, and 
defy every analytical test ; and what’s more, he could imi- 
tate disease so well that any practitioner would give a 
regular certificate of death.” 

“ Strange evidence to be given publicly, that.” 

“Judge said as much, and snubbed him.” 

“ I should like to read the report of the trial ; can you 
get it ? ” 

“Oh yes. This is the best drop of brandy I ever tasted,” 
said Wingfield, holding up his glass and looking admiringly 
at the liquor. 

“ What was the fellow’s name ? ” 

“ The doctor’s ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“Dampez; Dr. Dampez.” 

“'Dr. Dampez,” responded Decker reflectively, “ does he 
live in London ? ” 

“ No doubt.” 

“ Will you get me his address ? ” 

“YeS,”said Wingfield, taking out a pocket-book and 
making a note. 

“ Bring it me to-morrow, with the report of a trial.” 

“ I will.” 

“ I have several secret missions in London,” said Decker ; 
“ two of them I entrust to you. But I must have close, 
faithful, and confidential service. I shall pay you better 
than ever you have been paid in your life.” 

“ Will that be confidential also ? ” asked Wingfield, 
taking out a pocket-book. 

“ Quite — close and inviolable.” 

“ It’s always best to have a clear understanding at first.” 
said Wingfield, laying his finger caressingly upon his nose. 

“ That’s T. W.’s view ? ” 

“ To a T,” said Wingfield, helping himself to brandy. 

“ Very well,” said Decker, taking out a pocket-book and 


308 


CRUEL LONDON. 


handing the officer a bank-note, “ take that as an earnest 
of my good intentions.” 

Wingfield looked at it and then at Decker. 

“Honor bright, no kid, as we say in London, ‘ Janak,’ 
as we say in the North ? ” 

Decker nodded. 

“ It’s too much, sir ; but ’ Merican millionaires are said 
to be more liberal than the English breed, and I thank yo. 
I’ll tiy and earn it ; but would you kindly give it me in five- 
pun notes ; wouldn’t do for me to be changing a sum like 
that ; I’d have my own pals set to watch me, if that got 
aired.” 

Wingfield handed the note back to Decker. 

“ I will have it changed for you ; the notes shall be ready 
for you when you bring me that report and address to- 
morrow.” 

“Thank yo, sir.” 

“We will now come to our first item of business,” said 
Decker. “Do you know Miss Weaver’s Retreat?’’ 

“ It’s been through my hands : she’s a clever ’ un, is 
Weaver ; but there’s a many of her sort.” 

“Yes?” 

“ Lives on rich fools who think they are helping the poor. 
It’s a trade in London ; they call it charity-mongering.” 

“ I want that institution busted, as we say in the States, 
and Miss Weaver and Major Wenn sent to the Tombs.” 

“ The tombs ? ” 

“ To prison.” 

“ That’s Mr. Sparcoe’s craze.” 

“ Sparcoe’s ? ” 

“ Yes, the lawyer; but he won’t spend money on it, else 
he could have done the job long ago.” 

Sparcoe shall meet you to-morrow at eleven, when you 
bring the address and the report. You shall arrest Weaver 
and Wenn ; I’ll pay the bill.” 

“That’s business, T. W., if you like,” said Wingfield. 

“ You understand ? ” 

“ T. W.’s on it,” said Wingfield. 

“ Does T. W. know a person named Fitzherbert Robin- 
son ? ” 

“ A financier and a speculator in the City ?” 

“Yes, a sort of swell, I believe you would call him in 
London.” 


CRUEL LONDON. ^09 

“ Cool, downy cove, who puts side on, and was in the 
Hampstead Cemetery swindle ” 

“ I see you know him.” 

“ A cruel party about women ; brags of things as would 
make a Lancashire lad’s clogs rattle about his shins— one of 
those prowling beasts as deludes silly young gals and 
leagues with bad old un’s.” 

“ I want him in gaol, ironed, and when he’s convicted I 
want to tell him why ; if he was in America, I’d shoot hiiii*; 
but you make a fuss about carrion here, and I can’t afford 
to waste time.” , 

Decker’s face flushed, and he rose nervously to his 
feet. 

“We Americans, Mr. Wingfield, love our country ; we 
are more patriotic than any people under the sun — we are a 
united nation on that platform. This Robinson has grossly 
insulted, and would have brutally wronged, a countrywoman 
of mine. If I had time, and it was convenient, I would 
shoot him. He is one of your London sharks, a swindling 
thief. When he is committed on a substantial charge, I 
want an order to see him ; and there is another note, which 
can be turned into smaller ones, waiting for the time when 
you can tell me he is laid by the heels.” 

“ Thank yo ! I’ll nick the beggar ; he deserves it,” said 
Wingfield. 

“ And now, good-night,” said Decker. “ If you have an 
intimate friend in your own line whom I could employ in a 
smaller matter, send him to me between now and twelve o’ 
clock — reliable, shrewd, experienced, and with a knowledge 
of lodging houses and slums. I go to bed at half past twelve. 
My man will be up till twelve.” 

“ His name will be Buncher — Jim Buncher — safe and 
downy as a ferret in a rabbit-hole. He’ll be here at 10.30 
sharp. T. W. knows where to drop on him at 10.15. Good- 
night, sir.” 

“ The business is all straight and clear, eh ? ” 

“ As a die,” replied Wingfield ; “ T. W.’s on it.” 

He tapped T. W. briskly, as much as to say, “ Now, then, 
wake up, and bid the gentleman good-night adding aloud, 
“Good-night, sir, and thank you, sir. To-morrow at 
eleven.” 

Decker walked to the door, and heard Davings showing 

W. out before he closed it. 

Then, pacing the room slowly to and fro, his hands 


310 


CRUEL LONDON. 


clenched, his eyes flashing, he spoke to himself of his 
jjlans. 

“Not a soul who ever injured her, not a single British 
thief of them, shall escape. Ill have every murdering ’coon 
of them under my heel. A pretty harmless child, a stranger 
so lovely that their pink and white beauties fade into nothing 
before her, an innocent, unsuspecting lamb to be worried and 
torn by these London wolves before she had fairly landed ! 
By heaven ! if I had never known her, I’d fall on them like 
an Indian, and cleave their cowardly hearts. But to have 
loved her as I have ! Lord, Lord, I wonder that there is a 
drop of patience in my soul ! If I had found her married 
and happy, the charm of some peaceful home, the gentle 
spult of one of those pleasant English hearths I’ve heard 
so much about, I think I could have looked in upon her 
unseen, and blessing her, gone down to my grave without 
asking even a friendly adieu from her sweet lips. But to 
find her a victim to the lust and licence of a libertine, left a 
waif on the streets, a fugitive from a den in Porter’s Build- 
ings, a lamb who fled from a she-wolf to run the risk of 
worse treatment at the hands of Fitzherbert Robinson ; to 
live at last on the charity of strangers ! Poor unhappy soul ! 
and she loved me all the time, and cried aloud for me ! I 
knew it. Bid not her very agony make itself heard over 
sea and land, till it fell upon me in the mountains ? Did 
not her childlike face tell me so when I lifted her up and 
she opened her eyes, lying in my aiuns in that poor but 
hospitable room ? Shall I ever forget those heart-searching 
words, “Tristram Decker, I knew you were coming to save 
me ; I knew it ! ” Ah, Caroline! if there were some drug of 
drowsy, dreamy power that could enshroud these last few 
years, and give us to each other as we were when first I 
saw you, a rosebud on a knotted stem, that put out thorns 
against me, thorns behind which you crept for shelter when 
I stretched out my hand 1 ” 

He sat down in an easy rocking-chair before the fire. 

“ What a happy fate ours might have been ! ” he thought, 
as he swayed himself to and fro. “Wealth, and Love, and 
Health, what a Trinity ! Wealth I have, Love I had ; but 
the temple is desecrated, the idol is broken. Health ! Well, 
the absence of that last necessity to human happiness, after 
all, only compels me to crowd my work into a closer space ; 
it brings punishment and reward the quicker. I will play 


CRUEL LONDOK. . 311 

the two together — Vengeance and Mercy, and she shall be 
the Lady Bountiful when I’m gone.” 

“ It’s Buncher, sir, Jim Buncher,” said a voice in the 
midst of a pleasant dream, which had peopled a short sleep 
with bright fancies. 

Decker breathed hard, and then woke up. Daviugs 
was standing near him. 

“ Guess I’m sorry to wake you, but this gentleman said 
his business was important.” 

“ Yes ; it’s Buncher, Jim Buncher, friend of Mr. Topper 
Wingfield, sir,” said a stolid-looking man in a black suit of 
clothes and a white neckerchief. 

“ Quite right ; leave Mr. Buncher with me, Davings — I 
shall not keep him five minutes. Take a seat, Mr. Buncher. 
Mr. Wingfield has told you that I am a liberal paymaster ? ” 

“YeSj sir.” 

“ You know the low parts and slums and lodging-houses • 
of London ? ” 

“ I do. I’m on the Scripture Reader lay just now, 
working Whitechapel on a charity box business ; two 
parties in firemen’s clothes, that collect among small 
tradespeople for Disabled Fire Brigade Fund one day, and 
put on white ties the next in the interest of a Home 
Mission.” 

“Very well. Do you know Porter’s Buildings?” 

“Rather.” 

“And Irish Moll? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Where is she now ? ” 

“ In prison.” 

“ What for ? ” 

“ Robbing a young foreign lady.” 

“ Do you remember the lady’s name ? ” 

“ I got up the case against Moll, and we had a difficulty 
because the lady didn’t appear.” 

“ You got over it ? ” 

« Vpo 

“How?” 

“ Miss Weaver appeared, and she said the foreign lady 
— Gardinger, I think, was her name — had left the Retreat 
with a friend of her family, and she believed had gone back 
to America ; so we had to let her go on that. But another 
charge was made against her ; we proved three previous 
convictions, and she’s gone for seven years.” 


312 


CRLKL LONDON. 


“ Have you Jieard of a woman named Dorothy Migs- 
wood ? ” 

“ Can’t say that I have.” 

Decker described her ( for Mrs. Gardner had told him 
the whole story of her troubles from beginning to end), and 
a telegram of inquiry to the owner of The Cottage at Essam 
had been answered to the effect that Dorothy Migswood 
had left the neighborhood, it was believed for London. 

“ How these are the facts : here are notes for fifty pounds 
as a retaining fee. Let me know where Migswood is, what 
she is doing, and all about her, within a week, and I will 
more than double this small fee.” 

“ Yes, sir,” said Buncher ; “and Irish Moll ? ” 

“ Let her rest in peace, unless you can find her a com- 
panion in Dorotliy Migswood.” 

“By all means,” said Buncher. 

“ Good-night, Mr. Buncher.” 

“Good-night,” said the gentleman who was on the Scrip- 
ture Reader lay, and Mr. Tristram Decker lighted a fresh 
cigar and renewed his conversation with himself, walking 
about the room and stopping every now and then to cough 
violently and gasp for breath. 

“Robinson in training, old Sleaford well in hand. Miss 
Weaver and Major W enn in the care of Sparcoe and T. W., 
Buncher laying for Migswood — the ground is well occupied ; 
the game will soon start. Mr. Philanthropical Sleaford 
shall talk to me of his clever son to-morrow, and tell me 
where he is. Mr. Topper Wingfield, I have to thank you 
for starting a new train of ideas. Dr. Dampez must be an 
interesting man. “Murder as a Fine Art” is a strangely 
fascinating subject in the page of De Quincey. But he 
was a vulgar hero after all, the English hero of the essayist. 
Is killing always murder? What creatures of circum- 
stances we are ! I remember when my blood froze with 
horror at the tortures of the Inquisition, at stories of the lin- 
gering deaths of men under the sentences of persecuting fana- 
tics. Perhaps the war cured me of my sensitiveness about 
death. I think at this moment I am capable of inventing tor- 
tures for Tom Sleaford and presiding over them. But not 
mere physical tortures ; no, for they bear no comparison with 
my agony. My God ! how that man has tortured me ! The 
rack, the wheel, the bastinado, they would have been sooth- 
ing compared to the misery of my blighted hopes ; the 
wretchedness of listening to that poor child’s story as she 


CRUEL LONDOiV. 


313 


knelt at my feet and tore the confession from her bleeding 
heart. Why did I force it from her? Iliad aright to 
know it all, for her sake as well as my own, to justify her, 
to enable me to avenge my countrywoman, to pay tribute 
of justice to the manes of my own murdered love ! The 
one great ideal of my .soul, the one holy yearning of my 
heart, a pure, noble, all-absorbing love, slain, murdered, 
mangled by a selfish, heartless thief, who took an angel 
prisoner and bedaubed her snowy wings with pitch ; my 
angel, the spirit of beauty and gentleness at whose feet I 
Avorshipped. O bitter, cruel, lustful ruffian ! Tristram 
Decker is on thy track. His golden shafts shall reach thy 
black craven heart — selfish, lying, cowardly thief ! ” 

“ I thought you was calling me,” said Davings, entering 
the room, and answering • Decker’s excited and inquiring 
gaze. 

“No, Davings ; no,” said Decker, sighing. 

“ Guess you ain’t well to-night — over working yourself,” 
said Davings ; “ and you ain’t got no call to do it. I reckon 
I’ll go back to New York if you don’t give it up.” 

“ It’s only for a short time, Davings. I shall not be busy 
very much longer. I shall finish it all up in a few weeks, 
Davings, and then I mean to have a long, quiet rest.” 

Davings looked at his master. There were tears in 
Decker’s eyes. 

“A long, quiet rest, Davings, a holiday for you, my 
friend, and a quiet rest and no more work for me.” 


CHAPTER III 

THE ARROGANCE OF INFIDELITY, i 

The east wind blustered down the river and spent itself 
at sea, and there came a breeze from the southwest blowing 
over London. The sun shone hot and bright and the lepers 
of the cruel city crawled out of their holes to bask in its 
beams. At night the doorstep, the parks, and the dark 
arches were almost warm and comfortable. The familiar 
resting-places of the outcast, , and they who are unnumbered 
in the census, were luxurious under the southwest wind, 


314 


CRUEL LONDON. 


when compared with the reign of the east. The half a 
million of London paupers broke their bread with a grim 
joyousness now that the summer had come, while the 
twenty thousand masters of slaves in plush decorated the 
park with their glittering equipages. Tristram Decker 
opened his window and looked upon the brightness of Lon- 
don. He gazed at the wonderful procession. Cab and car- 
riage, omnibus and barouche, plodding horses dragging 
heavy loads, prancing steeds in burnished harness ; here a 
costermonger defiant behind a donkey; there a duke 
flourishing his gold-mounted whip, with a prince sitting by 
his' side on the box of his drag ; now a cart full of flowers 
“ all a-growing, all a blowing then a brewer’s dray with 
mighty horses bruising the very roadway with their clanging 
hoofs. On the pavements, never ceasing streams of human 
life, making their way to and fro' like contrary flowing 
streams ; and the glorious sun, high up in the blue heavens, 
flooding the human rivers with light and warmth, which a 
company of Household Guards flashes back in blaze of 
burnished gold and steel as it canters gayly by to St. 
James’s Palace. 

“A wonderful city,” mused Decker,“ a cruel city, a scram- 
ble for wealth and pleasure ; a fight for meat and drink, 
millions working that the few may be happy ; the 
East, like Dives in hell, looking up to Lazarus in the 
West.” ■ 

“ What are you thinking of, Tristy ? ” asked Kerman, 
who had entered the room without disturbing his friend. 

“ That the Bible is a fable, and religion an invention to 
keep the poor in order.” 

“ You didn’t think so on that Christmas Day up in the 
mountains of the Sacramento ? ” 

“ I was a coward then.” 

“Ko, you were never a coward. Decker,’ said Kerman, 
laying his hand affectionately on his friend’s shoulder, 
“ and you are too good a fellow not to believe in God, by 
whose mercy we were so miraculously saved.” 

“ And by whose mercy poor old Maggs and his fellows 
were lost,” said Decker. “ Ko, no. Jack, it’s all very well ; 
let the happy believe, let the fortunate be content to think 
they are in special keeping : the miserable know better.” 

“ Tristy, you are getting into a bad way.” 

“ No, my eyes are open. I know all about it now.” 

“ All about what ? ” 


CRUEL LONDON, 315 

“ Everything. God has retired from business. I’m go- 
ing to do Ills work.” 

“ Decker, that is blasphemy.” 

1 Then don’t be inquisitive about my new, philosophy, 
Jack,’/ «aid Decker, looking round upon him with a sad 
smile. 

. “ Tristy, Tristy, you make’ me feel miserable to see you 
so changed. You can’t look up at the sun and down at the 
flowers and deny the Creator.” 

. “ I went out at four o’clock this morning, and I saw the 
first streaks of daylight struggling into the dark arches. I 
saw the sun trying to make its way into Porter’s Buildings ; 
and I helped a policeman to lift a woman and her cliild out 
of a hovel into a coach — they were dying of starvation, 
within a block or two of Lord Jorrocks’, who had given a 
dinner the day before to a dirty Persian chief, and the cost 
of the flowers which decorated the table would have- kept 
that woman and her little one for two or three years. ^ 
What does your Deity say to that ? ” 

“ He promises a compensation in the next world,” said 
Kerman, “ and makes it as difiicult for a rich man to get in 
to enjoy the everlasting bliss of heaven as it is for a camel 
to go through the eye of a needle.” 

And do you believe that?” 

M Don’t you? ” 

I think I did once. The poor get some consolation 
out of it. The rich don’t believe it.” 

“ Oh yes, some of the wealthiest people in England are 
the most pious.” 

“ But they continue to be rich, in spite of the threat of 
the camel and the needle. No, no, Kerman, it’s all wrong. 
Tliis Christianity has been going on in full swing for over 
a thousand years, millions of priests and agents have worked 
the concern — they have cut throats and burnt at the stake 
for it, they have built it up and given your Deity every 
power that can be conceived, and all the attributes of mercy, 
truth, love, justice ; and yet in this European centre of His 
greatness He lets your kings and ministers turn peasants 
into demons ; He gives the strong the right to make war 
upon the weak ; He lets the mighty carry fire and sword 
through peaceful valleys, and trample down with bloody 
heel the innocent and the weak — women and children, vir- 
tuous and wicked alike. Christianity is a failure. Jack. If 


CRUEL LOUDON, 


there is a devil, lie is the individual to pray to. He seems 
to have all the power/’ 

“ Decker, Decker ! ” exclaimed Jack, “ you must not 
talk like that. I shall get Jane to argue with you. She 
will put you right. Come now, let us leave religion, and 
talk of wordly affairs ; for it’s no good trying to make us 
believe that God did not save us ; that in His mercy He did 
not bring us both here at the right moment — me to marry 
Jane, you to help and comfort Caroline. You must make 
it up there, dear old boy, and let us all be happy together.’ 

“ You don’t know me. Jack.” 

‘‘I used to. You were always eccentric, but you are 
more so now” 

“ How? ” 

“You said once if you found Caroline married you 
would buy her. Come old friend, try and forgive her.” 

“ Forgive her ! Bless her innocent heart, I have nothing 
to forgive- her ! ’’ 

“ W ell, then, give up all those severe ideas about mar- 
riage. Men have shut their eyes before now, and if she is 
married, there are divorces to be had, and she is worth a 
sacrifice. If it’s easy to give up religion, it ought to be no 
harder to give up other prejudices.” 

“ Kerman, that is a good argument. It does credit to 
your head and to your heart. It’s the best bit of practical 
philosophy I have ever heard you utter. I wish I was a 
fool, a good, easy-going Christian. I am not Jack. Your 
Deity lias fixed me up as I am — wound up my machinery 
and set me going, and I shall finish at the point for which 
I am “ booked,” as you call it on your railways.” 

“Well, it’s no good talking; I suppose you will do as 
you please ? ” 

“ As my nature pleases. I am going to humor my in- 
stincts, Jack, good or bad ; and I am trying to do some 
work which the great Director ought to do for Himself.” 

Kerman tried to put his hand over Decker’s mouth. The 
small exertion of resistance on Tristram’s part set him 
coughing, and Davings had to be called in to administer 
one of his pleasant drinks. 

“Wcgo to Paris to-night,” said Kerman, presently 
“ and we shall be married on our return.” 

“ How long do you stay in Paris ? ” 

“ About a week.” 


CRUEL LONDOiV, 


317 


“ Get married quickly, Jack ; I don’t want you to be 
postponing it while you bury me.” 

“ Mr. Sparcoe,” said ’Ennery James, who looked pale 
and haggard after his night’s debauch. 

“ Don’t go Jack,” said Decker, “ let me introduce you 
to a funny man.” 

Ah, you had me there ! ” said Sparcoe, supporting his 
back witli his left hand. 

“ I expected you at eleven ; it is four now.” 

“Very sorry. I’m a funny man, you see. I met Mr. 
Topper Wingfield on my way, and he said he had just left 
you, and you wanted that Retreat business gone into ; a 
regular old hobby of mine, that, so I went back, had all the 
j)apers looked out, gave T. W., you know his funny way, 
the latest tip about Weaver and Wenn — we shall have them 
— and sent him with the documents to apply for a warrant, 
which I hope he’s got by this time ; and there, if you 
w'ouldn’t mind letting me ring for a little drop of whisky, 
just to steady my hand, I should thank you kindly.” 

The whisky being produced, Mr. Sparcoe sat down and 
spread some papers before him. 

“ I want you to sign this. Jack ; it’s some money that 
eccentric Federalist has given to Caroline, and two trustees 
are required ; 1 put you down for one, Brayford the other.” 

Kerman took the paper up and glanced at it. 

“ Certainly ; where do I sign ? ” 

“ Here — just there,” said Sparcoe, “ ‘ I deliver this as my 
act and deed.’ That’s it.” 

“ Then I have no more to say at present,” said Decker, 
“ except that the Retreat business is my affair, that you can 
have a cheque for costs whenever you like.” 

“You are a splendid fellow,” said Sparcoe. “ I’m a 
funny man ; you are a funnier. I admire you very much. 
You must come home and see me under my vine and fig- 
tree. Will you?” 

I shall be very happy to do so, some day ; but I had 
not finished. Do you know the .Vale of Essam’? ” 

“Yes. Good hunting district. Yes, yes.” 

“ There is a small estate near the river, opposite the 
town of Essam, called The Cottage.” 

“I think I have heard of it.” 

“ I want to buy it. Can you manage that?” 

“I can.” 

“Buy it as it stands — furniture, stock and everything.” 


818 


CRUEI. LONDON, 


“ At what figure ? ' 

“Bnv it, Mr. Sparcoe.” 

“Well, you are something like a client !” exclaimed 
Sparcoe. “It’s areal pleasure to do your Inisiness. When 
do you want the place ? ” 

“At once.” 

“All right! Is that all for to-day ?” asked Sparcoe, 
tugging at his beard and rising from his chair. 

“ All, thank you.” 

“ Then good day,” said Sparcoe, mut-tering, as he left 
the room : “Well, I thought I was the funniest man out, 
toucli and go, yes or no, make up your mind and it’s done, 
hit or win, never counting the bars of the liighest gate or 
asking the width of the brook behind the stiffest fence. 
But there, pshaw I he’s the best fellow I’ve ever seen. Me 
a funny fellow ! Pshaw ! he leaves me miles behind.” 

“ He’s a character, eh ? ” 

“Yes,” said Kerman, smiling. 

“ London is not half so prosaic as some of you English- 
men fancy, now that mere picturesque vagabondage is gone 
by. It is full of character, just as full as it is of misery, 
drunkenness, cruelty and vice,” said Decker. 

“ You talk about London as if you had known it all your 
life.” 

“ I hav6. This little country of yours, with its mighty 
city and its wonderful history, its green meadows, its moss- 
grown antiquities, and its Thames, with the argosies of the 
world on its bosom, have they not a more engrossing in- 
terest for cultured Americans than the legends of Greece 
and Rome? Don’t think that the heart of every educated 
American has not a corner of it set apart in which he does 
homage to the home of his forefathers.” 

“ Ah, now you are beginning to talk like your old self, 
Tristy,” said Kerman, in his frank, breezy way, “ when w^e 
were companions in those long, starlight nights in Cali- 
fornia.” 

“ Am T, Jack ? Then it is time for you to go. I am 
not going to talk like that any more.” 

Decker looked at his watch. 

“ I have an appointment,” he said, “ with a man you 
won’t care to meet. The fellow will be here in five min- 
utes ; I dare be bound he would talk religion to you by the 
yard, and pick your pocket when you were most impressed 
with his virtue.” 


CRUEL LONDON. 


319 


“Tristy, it dv)es not follow that because there are hypo 
crites in the world who use religion for a cloak, that Chris- 
tianity is not^ a Divine revelation. John the Baptist was 
none the less true because Judas Iscariot was false/’ 

“Jack, dear old friend, you are improving. You would 
soon be able to' talk well from a good, sober, orthodox 
standpbint if you took theology in hand ti little. When 
you are married, and I have more time on my hands, we 
will resume the subject ; and seriously, my good fellow, I 
am most anxious that you should take your handsome Jane 
to church quickly.” 

“ Not more anxious than I am,” said Kerman. “ There’s 
many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip, and I don’t want to 
run any more risks.” 

“Well, then. Jack, if she will consent, make it next 
week. I am going away for some time soon, and I must 
be at the wedding.” 

o . • 

“ Yes, indeed, you must.” .. 

“Next week, then, or I may be — ^ah, heaven knows 
where ! I’m going to travel by and by.” 

“Far?” 

“ Yes. I can’t go until I’ve seen Mr. and Mrs. Kerman 
starting on their honeymoon.” 

“And about Caroline ?” Kerman asked, with a grave 
face, and laying his hand on his friend’s arm. “ Jane will 
expect her to be of our party.” 

“Where?” 

“ When we are manned.” 

Decker hesitated. 

“ I won’t be married unless that gentle, loving woman 
IS there* to give us- her blessing. Remember, Decker, how 
much Jane and I owe to her gentle courage.” 

“Yes, yes.” 

“ Do you object to her being present at the ceremony ? ” 

“I cannot. I have not the rigijt.” 

“ Have you the inclination to ? ” 

“No.” 

“Jane shall write to her.” 

“ She has no master— no authority above her own.” 

“ That’s all right, then. Good-by, Tristy. Try and 
think better about those new opinions of yours.” 

' “Yes,* I’ll try. Adieu, or better, good-by for the 
present, as you say \i.e shall soon meet again. My regards 


320 


CRUEL LONDON, 


and compliments to Miss Crosby, and a word to old Thomp- 
son, if you like. Good-by.” 

Decker stood at the window and saw Kerman striding 
like an athlete across the road. He watched the manly 
figure until it disappeared in the distance, and he thought 
of the vision of Mirza and the bridge with the broken 
arches. “ There were vultures, harpies, ravens, cormor- 
ants, upon the middle arches,” he said to himself, recalling 
the classic English story; “there were envy, avarice, super- 
stition, despair, love, with the like cares and passions that 
infest human life. And there were the fresh, green islands 
beyond, the mansions of good. men after death; the old 
conceit ; the everlasting human yearning for another 
world, something beyond the. gloomy bridge and its pit- 
falls — the realization of an ideal of peace and happiness. 
Ah, well ! But it was only the long, hollow valley at the 
foot of Bagdad, after all. And so it ends, and so it ends ! ” 

“Mr. Jeremiah Sleaford,” said the servant, ushering in 
that smug citizen, with his round face and his acted smile 
of innocence and geniality. 

It was the “ make-up ” of the old days ; the black vel- 
vet waistcoat, and tie showing a set of diamond studs, gray 
trousers, and a black frock coat ; and he bowed with proud 
humility to Mr. Decker, as he handed his mourning hat and 
gold-headed cane to ’Ennery James, who simply deposited 
them upon a side table, nodding at Mr. Sleaford, as much 
as to say, “ You haven’t come to luncheon, nor to dinner, 
only to make a call, as I should think, and you should have 
kept them in your hand.” But Jeremiah smiled loftily upon 
the ostentatious footman, and Decker returning Mr. Slea- 
ford’s ceremonious bow and “Mr. — Decker — I — believe?” 
with unusual formality, and motioned to a seat. 

“ It is a lovely morning,” said Sleaford, as if he was 
turning the remark over on his tongue like a sweetmeat, 
“ a lovely morning, and a great blessing, after the east wind, 
which is very troublesome to the poor, the sick, and the 
aged.” 

“I am desirous of placing another deposit at the West 
End Bank, Mr. Sleaford, and I wish to consult you about 
other investments.” 

“You are very good to give me your confidence, and I 
will at the same time say, and I can without arrogance, 
that whoever has advised you to use my bank, and consult 
Is humble formula, has done you a service, six*,” 


CRUEL LONDON. 


321 


“ I am convinced of it.” 

“ The principle on which the West End Bank of Deposit 
is conducted, allows ” 

“Yes,” said Decker, interrupting him, “I have read 
carefully your prospectuses, pamphlets, and statements of 
account ; and, by the way, I see that Mr. Tom Sleaford, 
your son, is one of your honorary advising actuaries. I 
should much like to make his acquaintance, and avail my- 
self of his technical knowledge and his friendly interest.” 

“ Certainly, by all means. I shall have great pleasure.” 

“ I met an old friend of his, a year or two ago, out in 
the West, who was continually talking of him.” 

“ Indeed, yes, to be sure ; the world, after all, is not so 
large as it seems ; we are all destined to meet again, 
sooner or later ; I remember to have seen that discussed in 
a treatise on ” 

“ Is your son in London ? ” 

“ N^o — no, he is abroad,” said Sleaford, trying to get back 
to the point at which he was interrupted but Decker had 
laid down his own track in which the conversation should 
travel. 

“ He is a judge of horses, I believe,” continued Decker, 
“ and has a knowledge of English country life ? ” 

“Yes, that is true — as I was saying ” 

“ I want to buy an estate and a first-class stud in a hunt- 
ing country,” said Decker, again interrupting his visitor. 
“How, if your son would take this in hand for me, or give 
me his advice, if he is not too proud to make it a business, 
I should not consider a few thousand pounds too much by 
way of honorarium.” 

“ My son’s pride shall not be above it, sir ; thank good- 
ness, I have been blessed with a dutiful family, and even 
now that my son has long since come to man’s estate and 
can teach his fatlier, I can still exercise a parental control 
over him. He shall undertake the business, most assuredly. 
I will telegraph to him, and he shall wait upon you at once 
— at once.” 

“ If he is anywhere near Paris,” suggested Kerman, “ I 
can call upon him.” 

“ He was in Paris yesterday, I believe, but he could 
meet you at Boulogne ; he has a suite of rooms in the hotel 
there — indeed, he lives there half his time — likes the sea, 
does a little yachting. His mother and sister are fond of 


822 


CRUEL LONDON. 


Boulogne, and it is one of his greatest delights to entertain 
them and ” 

“ Are they there now ? ” 

“ No, not at present; they will wait until the season is 
well advanced; the social duties of London society are 
exacting, and tlie ladies have to see to that part of our 
metropolitan existence. Tom doesn’t care for it; hunting, 
shooting, yacliting, and a week or two in Paris no w and 
then — that is Tom’s idea.” 

“ And mine, and mine,” said Decker, “ we shall get on 
capitally. I long to know your son. I will call at Bou- 
logne on my way to Paids for that purpose.” 

“ When do you propose to be there ?” 

“ In a fortnight — this day fourteen days — will you give 
me a letter to him ? ” 

“ With tlie greatest pleasure. Shall I induce him to 
come over in the meantime ? ” 

“ No, not on any account; I would not presume to 
trouble him, and, in addition, my movements are very un- 
certain. . I may be in Rome to-morrow, in Egypt next 
week. A man who has the misfortune to be so rich as I 
am, Mr. Sleaford, is a slave to his money, and never knows 
where he may be from day to day.” 

“True, triie,” said Sleaford, making up his mind to go 
over to Boulogne by the mail and arrange with Tom in a 
written agreement to share the profits of all transactions re 
Decker. ' r • 

“ But this day fortnight I will call upon your son in Bou- 
logne, and in the meantime you might write, to him about 
the estate and the horses, and rny desire to avail myself oJ^ 
his technical knowledge and his friendly interest.” 

“Cei‘tainly, by all means. I shall hav.e great pleasure, 
and if you will allow me I give you a line to him 
now.” 

lie took up a sheet of note-paper and an envelope, and 
wrote : — 

“My Peak Son’, — I have great pleasure in introducing 
to you T. Decker, Esq., the distinguished millionaire and 
traveller from the United States. To serve Ins iiitere.s.t will 
be' to serve me. He has honored me with his confidence, 
and I desire to advance his wishes in. every way as a banker, 
and, if I may venture to say so, as a friend, for he is, a com- 
parative stranger in Europe, and our duty becomes a pleas- 


CRUEL LONDON. 323 

are in the case of a gentleman so eminent, so cultured, find 
so courteous. — Your most affectionate fatlier, 

.. “Jeremiah Sleaford.” 

He folded the letter'up, put it into an envelope, addressed 
it, and handed it unsealed to Decker. 

Thank you, Mr. Sleaford.” 

“ Will you read it. Yes, yes 5 do.” ^ 

Sleaford was anxious to impress upon Decker the charac- 
ter of the. affectionate ‘relationship that existed between 
himself and his son. Decker read the letter. 

“ Ah, this is indeed kiiVd,” he said. 

Sleaford rose and put out his hand. Decker laid the 
letter hi it. ' ' V ' ■ 

“ Nd, mo^ your hand, Mr. De6kCr; let me grip it as a 
friend, and 'iii'the earnest ho^ife that this brief acquaintance 
mafy lead io a lasting and mutually profitable intimacy.” 
Decker allo\ved Sleaford' to shake his hand. 

“ Certainly, by all meails,” said Decker. 

“ Y^6u spoke abOiit some question of a larjje investment 
of capital?” remarked Sleaford,- as if referring to a matter 
''quite by the way, thou^i it had been on his mind from the 
first. ’ ' ' ' 

“ Yes, sir; will you consider between now and the end 
of the Week how I can best invest, so far as profit and se- 
curity go, two milli.uns gold.” 

“ Poimds?” disked Sleaford. ' ' 

“ Sovereigns,” replied Decker. 

“I shall do so with jdeasure,” said Sleaford. “In ray 

early days I was the’ chairman of ” 

“ Will you write to me then at the end of the week?” 
Decker hsked, interrupting Jel-emiah the Loquacious at the 
outset of that gentleman’s latest version of his wealth in the 
grand old days. ; 

“ Ceitainly ; yes, most assuredly.” 

' “f' afn'ejfiiecting another visitor.” 

Of bourse. I can well understand that your time is of 
the^ highiist, value. Yes, yes ; good-morning, Mr.- Decker. 
Oobd day, sir ; I shall writedo you.” ^ y l 

J^‘feniiah the Astulle took up his hat and cane, smiled 
ben'Tguantly, put out his hand, shook Decker’s three fingers 
wahniy, and jbstled a gentleman who politely stood aside 
to receive Sleaford’s profuse apologies. ' 

Dr. Damijez, was then announced, and Sleaford heard 


324 


CRUEL LONDON. 


Mr. Tristram Decker say, “ I am not at home any more to- 
day, whoever calls.” 

Jeremiah had come to Pall Mall East in a brougham. He 
now dismissed it. He preferred to walk back to his Bank. 
He could think as he walked ; and his thoughts were many 
and important. A local journal had that very morning 
published an attack on the Bank. The writer doubted the 
value of the securities in which the surplus capital was said 
to be deposited. Within an hour of the paper appearing 
several ugly inquiries had been made by two of the directors, 
w’ho had been content to give the scheme the benefit of their 
names, and had taken no part in the. management of their 
Bank. Fourteen depositors had also given notice to with- 
draw .their numeys. It looked as if the wind which was to 
scatter the financial house of cards had begun to blow, when 
the American millionaire loomed in sight — the good angel. 
Sleaford at once dubbed him the guardian of his hopes, the 
protector of his house, the man whose gold would meet the 
run on the West End Bank ; for Sleaford did not doubt for 
a moment his capacity to convert a large contingent of 
Decker’s sovereigns to his own uses. The ungrateful toilei:, 
the rapacious small tradesman, the selfish workingman, who 
had put tlieir savings into the Bank of Deposit, should see 
how he would meet theii* claims ! A bold front and a 
smiling face at the beginning of the run upon his scanty 
coffers would convert what seemed like misfortune into a 
stroke of luck, and he should be able to turn the malice of 
his enemies to account. When they saw that he could meet 
their claims, and that he did so with a calm smile of rebuke 
for their selfishness and pity for their folly, he should con- 
quer all opposition. Then he had only to extract an apology 
from the local paper to establish his scheme on the surest 
foundations. He would go to Boulogne by the mail, and 
arrange with Tom in regard to the business which Mr. 
Decker desired to place in his hands, and return the next day 
to defend his citadel in Baker Street, like a besieged general 
who knew that his reserves were at hand. Arrived at the 
Bank, Mr. Sleaford found Mr. Topper Wingfield, as a country 
gentleman, anxious to place a small sum on deposit, with 
a view to extend transactions. Mr. Sleaford had no sus- 
picion of the detective. He did not know Mr. Topper 
Wingfield. Even if some disagreeable memory had crossed 
his mind, his vanity would have dismissed it; for Jeremiah 


CkUEL LOjVDON. 


32e 


the Discreet believed thoroughly in himself, and in the 
perfection of his schemes. It is quite possible that at times 
he even thought his plans honest. Some idea, at all events, 
that he had a prescriptive right to plunder the public pos- 
sessed him, or he would not have been so severe on the con- 
duct of the persons who had ventured to give notice of their 
withdrawal from the Bank. He had not hesitated to de- 
scribe them to his head cashier as a set of wretches who 
were utterly unworthy of his attention. 

“ Fortunately,” he said, “ Mr. Cashier, I can meet their 
malice morally and financially ; even if our system of re- 
quiring notice for the withdrawal of deposits did not give 
us time to prepare for any adverse action. I could give 
you ample funds to meet all claims to-day. I have a reserve 
tliat is unknown even to my family, undreamt of by my 
directors.” 

The head cashier was, no doubt, glad to hear this, be- 
cause he was quietly making his arrangements to visit some 
distant clime at an early day, and he was only waiting until 
the bank had a sufficient run of luck to make it worth his 
while to take a long farewell of his native land. 

“ Going to Boulogne, my dear,” said Mr. Sleaford, when 
Jeremiah reached home from the Bank, after having ex- 
plained the principles of the institution to ‘ T. W.’ 

“And at once? Well, I’m sure I hope it will do you 
good.” 

“ It is not a question of doing me good, Mrs. Sleaford ; 
it is business, though, at the same time, I must confess it is 
cliiefiy in the interest of our son Tom, who at last is, I 
think, destined, through my influence, to be of mutual bene- 
fit to father and son. Where is Tim ? ” 

“ Where is he? ” rejoined Tim, “ at your elbow, sure ; 
didn’t I let you in, and didn’t ye say, “Tim, I want ye? ” 

“ Yes, yes, of course. Pack up my bag, Tim, I am^o- 
ing to Boulogne. I shall return in the morning.” 

“ What time do ye go ? ” 

“ To-night, by the mail.” 

“ There’s plenty of time, anyway ; it’s only afternoon at 
present.” 

“ That’s true, Tim.” 

“ Av course it’s true,” ^aid Tim, making a dash at a 
bluebottle which was buzzing about Sleaford’s head, “ an’ 
the missus will have time enough to tell you of the wonders 
that have occurred. . - 


S26 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“ Wonders ! what wonders ? ” 

“ Oil, yes, I am sure I had almost forgotten,” said Mr*. 
Sleaford ; “You. put me in such a flurry about Boulogne.” 

“ Misther Kerman, sorr, he’s returned with riches galore, 
matrimony in his eye, and the Bank of England in his 
pocket ; bedad and I always liked the fellow, though ye did 
call him a clodhopper when he’d made sacrifices worthy of 
St. Patrick himself.” ' 

“ What is all this ? ” asked Sleaford, looking first at Tim 
and then at his wife. 

“ Be jabers an’ it’s wonderful ! Miss Patty will be afther 
telling ye all about it herself. She’s only just come in, and 
the telegrani that’s gone off to Misther Roper is a regular 
despatch, that it is, and more power to her!” 

“Tim, go away,” said Mrs. Sleaford. “I declare you 
seem entirely to forgejt yourself.” 

“ Ah, be jabers, I’ve done that same this many a year, 
with thinking too much about other people,” said Tim, 
leaving the room. 

Then Mrs. Sleaford, folding her withered arms de- 
murely over a black silk bodice, proceeded to give her won- 
dering husband^a rambling account of Patty’s- interview 
with Miss Crosby, 'which caused Jeremiah to curse in 'em- 
phatic language the brazen -vvoman who had stood b^ween 
Tom and all their best hopes on a certain first Sunday after 
Christmas, and to hope that she might meet with sundry 
and numerous calamities. Mrs. Sleaford met these reflections 
with mild protests of her own against Tom’s ingratitude, 
and' in the tearful expressions of her belief that if he had 
married Miss Crosby he would have done something for the 
solicitous authoress of his being. But she also hoped that 
the minx who had led him astray .'vyould meet with her due 
reward, and Mr. Brayford too, under whose pauper protec- 
tion Jeremiah uuderiood the disgraceful young person was 
liv>g. 

“ And so we are to have Roper as a son-in-law after all. 
Well, well, it is our duty to consult the happiness of our 
children before all other considerations. I have long since 
given my Consent, reluctaritly, I must confess ; but I have 
given up mere sentirneiffft’ of family pride, and Roper is, 
after all, not ungentlenianukgin his ihanners.' He shall 
come into the Bank. I will snSV Patty that I can be mag- 
nanimous as well as affectionate.” ■ 

“ Thank you pa,” Baid Patty, ^entering the room ; “ But 


CRUEL LONDON, 827 

I will not allow Mr. Roper to be indebted to my family for 
worldly advancement.” 

“ How do you mean, my love ? ” 

“lie slndl not be a banker.” 

“!My))Ct!” 

“ I don’t like banks.” 

“ Why, my love ? ” 

“ They break.” 

“ Break, Batty ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ But they are national institutions. Bankers rule the 
world.” 

“ They will not rule me.” 

“ Patty, my dear, you must not get silly notions into 
your head.” 

“ I can’t help it.” 

“ Why, dear ? ” 

“ Because I can’t always agree with you, papa ; and I 
am always silly when I don’t.” 

“But we must not be silly, my love ; and we must not 

f et absurd notions into our little heads about banks,” said 
leaford,. kissing his daughter on the forehead. 

“ Then don’t let us talk about such things,” said Patty, 
walking slowly to a corner of tlie room to pick up a box of 
water-colors and commence preparations for finishing her 
latest study of a sunset in the Himalaya Mountains from a 
chromo-lithograph. “ When I get my ten thousand pounds 
out of the Funds, or wherever itis,T shall keep it in several 
stockings until it is all spent.” 

Miss Sleaford patted some pinky-white clouds with a 
long brush as she uttered this latter financial absurdity, and 
looked up at her father with her calm eyes. Jeremiali, as 
he returned her look, with an impatient shrug of his 
shoulders, saw Patty’s dowry slipping still further out of 
I) is grasp. “Happily,” he thought to himself, “ I can do 
without it; my intimate friend, Mr. Tristram Decker, has 
placed his vast wealth at my disposal ; by the end of tlie 
week the new Pactolus will ’begin to flow in golden tor- 
rents in whatever course I shall direct. Baker Street and 
Fitzroy Square will be the principal receivers of the golden 
flood.” 

“ What are you thinking of, mv dear 2 ” asked Mrs. 
Sleaford. 

“ That it is a great blessing,” replied Sleaford, looking 


B28 


CRUEL LONDON. 


reproachfully at Patty and her sunset, “ we are not depen- 
dent on our children, or we might be left to tear our gray 
hairs in the streets, and call upon the winds to blow and 
crack their cheeks, like the venerable Lear.” 

Mrs. Sleaford shook her head, took out a lace handker- 
chief, and tried to force back the tears that would not be 
checked. 

“ Mamma,” said Patty, laying down her brushes, “ don’t 
be absurd ; pa knows he is talking nonsense.” 

Jeremiah raised his eyes solemnly to the ceiling and 
left the room, and ten minutes afterwards Patty and her 
mother had drifted into a mild conversation about the most 
becoming wedding-dress for a girl of Patty’s delicate com- 
plexion. 

And in the meantime Dr. Dampez was giving Tristram 
Decker a lesson in the mysterious and awful science of 
toxicology. 


CHAPTER IV. 

DR. DAMPEZ DISCOURSES OH POISONS. 

Small, deeply-set eyes, that seemed to focus an object 
as if they were lenses in a telescope, and could be projected 
forward and withdrawn within their depths, which were 
shadowy and dark, a sensual mouth, partially concealed by 
a black moustache, a heavy jaw, a broad, flat nose, a some- 
what retreating forehead, and black, silky hair ; Dr. Dampez 
was a remarkable looking man. Dressed in black cloth, he 
wore a white cravat and a pair of gold-rimmed eyeglasses. 
When he was amused or excited he had a habit of showing 
a set of white, regular teeth that might have been as false 
as the color of his black moustache, for his ill shaven cheeks 
and chin were stubbly with white hairs. Of medium height, 
he was broad shouldered and stoutly built. His complexion 
was sallow ; he took snuff continually ; he had large, fleshy, 
seared hands, and one leg was shorter than the other, so 
that he limped. 

He was in singular contrast to the spare, blue-eyed, deli- 
cate, nervous-looking man who sat opposite to him, eagerly 


CRUEL LONDON-. 


329 


drinking in the doctor’s words, and occasionally making a 
note on a sheet of paper. 

“Yes; it was a very remarkable case,” said Decker, 
“ and I am indebted to ypu for your learned and lucid de- 
scription of it.” 

“A friend of mine say, ‘You must leaf London.’ 
‘What for?’ I ask. ‘If your reputation is bad, lif in 
London ; if good, why then still lif in London. If you 
wish to hide yourself, lif in London. Do you desire to be 
pooblique, lif in London. No ; I stay. I like the great 
city of cities ; it agree with me best after I haf seen every 
other city of the world.’ ” 

The doctor spoke with a strong foreign accent, and with 
some slight action of the shoulders and the right hand. 
His voice was not unpleasant ; but the peculiar motion of 
the eyes was that of a man of intense secretive power. He 
took snuff not only as if it gave him some physical enjoy- 
ment, but as though it assisted his memory, and afforded 
him useful pauses for reflection and observation. Some 
men obtain this latter aid by the use of an eyeglass : Dr. 
Dampez did not use his glasses at all during his interview 
with Decker. 

“ You have travelled much ? ” 

“ All over the world. I know the flora, the minerals, 
the manufactures of every country, and I am acquaint with 
the mineral poisons of evei^J- land, east, west, north, and 
south.” 

“ Are you a Frenchman, monsieur ? Pardon my inquisi- 
tiveness ; I am anxious that we should know each other 
thoroughly.” 

“ Monsieur does me honor. I am a cosmopolitan ; my 
father was French, my mother was a Servian ; I was born 
in Cairo.” 

He smiled, and offered his snuff-box to Decker, who de- 
clined it politely. 

“ I prefer tobacco through the medium of a cigar. May 
I offer you a Cabana ? ” 

“No, thank you.” 

Decker lighted a cigar. 

“ And you have devoted most of your life to the study 
of toxicology ? ” 

“ All my life— all, monsieur.” 

“ Just now I XV as thinking it might be possible to learn 
from you all you know.” 


330 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“ It might be in a long time,” said the doctor, smiling, 
as if to hide the thought which was evidently in his mind. 

“ I want to be your pupil. Don’t think me rude. I 
gatliered, from what you said while ago, that you are 
poor ? ” 

“ It is k verity,” said the doctor, “ as poor as Monsieur 
•lob. . I had a patroness. The lawyer almost ruin her in 
making for her the defence necessaire in the affair I tell 
you about. She leaf London for economies on the Con- 
tinent ; I remain.” 

“ You wotild like to be rich?” 

“ To have moneys is to live,” replied Dampez, looking 
out of ids depths upon Decker, and taking a pinch of snuff 
with more than usual care, weighing it thoughtfully before 
consuming it. 

“ You acknowledge the power of gold?” 

“ He who denies it is a fool.” 

Decker chewed the end of his cigar in the corner of his 
moutli, and rising from his seat to get a better view of the 
doctor’s face leaned against the mantelshelf. 

“Will you let me make you rich? ” 

“ Will I ! ” exclaimed the doctor, shrugging his shoulders 

“You shall give me your secret, and I will 23ay for the 
knowledge. I will be your pupil.” 

Dampez moved his position, getting his back to the 
light. 

“ Gold for knowledge. • Much knowledge, much money,” 
said Decker ; “ is that fair ? ” 

“ Certaihl\% monsieur, it is.” 

“ Did Mr. lYpper Wingfield tell you I am a millionaire ? ” 

“ No, mbhsieur, no. But you are American.” 

“Therefore rich, eh?” 

“ Americans who travel much have money ; that i^ nay 
experience.”^ 

; “I have a gold mine, Mr. Dampez.” 

“ Mbn Dieu ! the philosojjher’s stone. Monsieur, I throw 
myself to your feet.” 

The Frenchman rose, smiled with his white tefeth, not 
with his saljovvrfac^ and in sitting down again managed to 
placb liirtiself betWecm Decker and the light. 

“ Then is it agreed that I become your pupil? ” . 

“Thcrtreaty is complete.” 

Shall t pay you a retaining fee at once? ”. 

“ Monsieur I’American is the soul of honor.” ■ * 


CRUEL LONDON. 


831 


“ Will you fix the amount ? ” 

“ I leaf it with you ; we are agreed about the value of 
knowledge and the j)o\ver of money.^’ 

Decker sat down and wrote a cheque for three hundred 
pounds. 

“ Will that retain your exclusive services for one week ? ” 

“Three ondred pounds,” said the doctor, his eyes com- 
ing out of their dej)ths to gloat over the draft, “ payable at 
Nathan’s! Monsieur is liberal.” 

“ At the end of the week I will double it.” 

“ Monsieur is charming.” 

“ You are a cosmopolitan, you say. Dr. Dampez ; but I 
suppose you have sworn allegiance to some government?” 

“No, monsieur. I have sworn allegiance to Science; I 
ow nothing to man. Nature is my monarch.” 

“ Forgive me for asking the question.” 

“Monsieur is speaking to his'^ervant,” said Dampez; 

“ let monsieur command.” 

“JMayl?” 

“ Certainement.” 

But the small eyes seemed to hide themselves atid watch. 
Decker tried to pejietrate the optical depths. 

“ You gif me moneys^; in return you af the service of 
my brain.” 

The doctor brushed away the snuff which had fallen upon 
his cravat’ and Decker, on the point of coming straigiit 
to the 'business which was in his mind, ])aused for the 
second time, partly in doubt of himself, partly in doubt (ff 
the' instrument to be used. It had occurred to him, after 
reading the Longville poisoning case, and giving rein to^his 
morbid fiiiicy, that if tliere ^yere a s.ubtle drug which would 
play tlie part of a familiar spirit to his bitter intentions 
agairtfet Tom Sleaford, he could encompass his revenge in 
such a way that no scandal should attach to the name of 
Caroline -Denton. Tt*)- shoot Sleaford would be to invite 
the whole world to an inquest upon Caroline s unhappy his- 
tory.^ He had resolved to kill him under any circumstances. 
He would never quit this world and leave Tom Sleaford 
behind. There were' other considerations which influenced 
him beyond the mere desire for vengeance : other intentions 
besides that -profanely expressed ope' of doing' the work of 
heaven. Bu't at present the design ‘of the fatal business 
was incomplete in conception and plan. It whu destined 


332 


CRUEL LONDON. 


that both should be in some measure directed by the knowl- 
edge to be imparted by Dr. Dampez. 

“ I have never studied toxicology,” said Decker : “ all I 
know about it I gleaned from the famous chapter in ‘ Monte 
Christo.” ’ 

“ Mcii foi^ then it is vera leetle,” said the doctor, showing 
Ills teeth. “ Mithridates, the Medicis, Flamel, Fontana, the 
‘ Arabian Nights,’ L’Abbe Adelmonte, Madame Yillefort, 
all amusant romantic. But science, monsieur, is science, 
and fiction is a different thing altogether. Aqua della 
l^ofana / — Ires hien ; well, what was it ? Only a leetle 
arsenic crystal dissolve in waterre. It puzzle les savants in 
the ages of the dark, but we detect him in the body to-day 
as easy as snuff. The cabbage-garden of ‘Monte Christo’ 
was pretty — tresjoli; it is the poetry of toxicology — vera 
good for the children, not for us, monsieur, not for us.” 

“ Don’t you think, then, that they manage these things 
in Eastern climes with the power accredited to them by 
Dumas?” 

“ No, not at all ; we laugh at their knowledge in London. 
Would you lif with the secrets of the world around you? 
— London, London ! The Orientals wise men in toxico- 
logy ! They poison like the butchers ; it is because there 
were no students des poisons of sufficient attainment to dis- 
cover the deadly mineral that can nevaire hide him from 
the test of the grand science. Monsieur, this talk of the 
secrets possess by Italy, by the Turk, by the Indian, it is 
imposition.” 

“ Is that so ? ” asked Decker, doubtingly. “ And 
yet—” 

You would refer to history ?” said the doctor, as if 
reading Decker’s thoughts. “ Well, it gif you accounts of 
that same aqua Tqfana as a mysterious invention of an Ita- 
lian womans of the fifteenth century, which was to destroy 
life in a year or in a few hours. During the Pontificate of 
Alexander VII. many husbands die, and there was a society 
of young married womans which deal with the poison under 
directions of an old hag of Sicily. You see how beautiful 
in this is the veil of religion ; Madame Spara, the crafty old 
womans, she make up her phials of aqua della Tofana with 
this inscription : ‘ Manna of St. Nicholas ! ’ Ah, Monsieur 
Decker, if you would play cards with the devil get under 
the wing of a saint.” 


CRUEL LONDOK. 


333 


“You are a philosopher as well as a toxicologist,” said 
Decker. 

“They go together,” replied the doctor. “Madame 
Spara kill six hundred people with the ‘Manna of St. 
Nicholas.’ To-day let her lif in Europe ; she kill one we 
find her out, with her vulgar arsenic and her cheap religion ; 
though we make much of the saints yet, and we murder 
thousands in open day with sword and gun, and Europe 
smile, only that we do it under a flag with a cross upon it, 
and for the loaf of God.” 

“ I like you. Dr. Dampez,” said Decker. “ I am in luck 
to find so excellent a professor.” 

“ The romance of poisons,” said the doctor, smiling with his 
teeth, “ is full of tragic episodes, all with one lesson against 
the unlearned tampering with a science which has no royal 
road to its mystery, monsieur. Marguerite d’Aubray, Mar- 
chioness de Brinvilliers, her game is a reproach to humanity, 
but it is also more, another of many examples that womans 
always end bad with toxicology. A Gascon loof madame, 
and is put into prison by his family. There he study 
poison. She come to him ; he gif her the leetle pill or what 
not ; she kill her family ; the Gascon make his leetle dose 
in a mask, the fumes of the compound are fatal to life ; one 
day his mask fall — he die. Madame is so much desire to 
have his secret, she say too much ; her crime was discover ; 
she give up the ghost in fire — they burnt her alife. You 
shudder, monsieur.” 

“ A horrible death for a woman ! ” said Decker. 

“ I do not know — perhaps it is; some womans who haf 
the faith in the saints embrace the fire and say they like it ; 
but that is in the past, not to-day, when martyrdom is out 
of the moder 

“ Gone, with truth, and honor, and virtue,” said Decker. 

“ You haf been disappointed, monsieur.” 

Decker shrugged his shoulders. 

“ Disappointment comes of expecting too much.” 

“ I hope you and I will avoid that in the business which 
brings us together.” 

Dr. Dampez took snuff, and brushed the dust of it from 
his sleeve. 

“ The ancients,” said Decker, bringing the doctor back 
to his subject, “ had poisoned rings ; the Greeks had fatal 
wreaths for virgin brows ; the Indians have poisoned arrows 
to this day.” 


334 


CRUEL LO.VnOX. 


“True; but we are talking of a method that will defy 
discovery, are we not? We wi|)e out the chai’laian of the 
past; we snuff out the quackery of witch and magician; 
we stand in the broad light of science.” 

“ It is plain that in this matter of toxicology I am an 
infant, gro))ing in the dark, nervous, until I grow accus- 
tomed to the absence of the daylight, but I shall have all the 
courage man can have when I feel my feet and stretch out 
my hand, and know what I am clutching.” 

“ Let monsieur be frank with his professor. If monsieur 
would study toxicology from a medico-legal basis, I shall 
tell him in the language of the manual that ‘ la douleur, les 
angoisses, les convulsions, en forment le triste cortege; la 
mort en est souvent le terme, quelquefois elle frappe sur le 
champ sa victime,’ which monsieur will translate — ‘ pains, 
agonies, convulsions, form the sad procession ; death is often 
the end : sometimes suddenly she strikes her victim.’ And 
with such dolorous introduction I shall teach him what a 
poison is, its effects, its antidotes, and I shall refer my pupil 
for historic instances to les causes celehres of “Le Manuel 
des Poisons.” But, if monsieur has other 'purposes, we 
waste time.” ^ 

Decker bowed, intimating his desire not to interrupt 
the doctor. 

“ You wish that I should discourse ?” 

“ Go on, doctor.” 

“ I fear to appear too egotistic, but I know of what I 
speak, and I lay on the side tradition, romance, the tragedy 
on the stage, with its ])hials and its rings, its fumes of the 
wdtches, and I deal -with this grand science alone, the 
wonders of nature and the wonders of the mind of man, 
which conquer nature. Let us dismiss the qua^s of the 
fiction and the stage, and come to the plain trutns. When 
I was a student first I haf for my professor a savant^ who 
was in the schools chez Chaussier ; he had witness aux ex- 
periences de MessieursAlibert Dupuytren, Magendie,Ortila ; 
he was acquaint with the interesting observations of Por- 
tal, and as his pu])il I began my life with the fruits of half 
a century of inquiry, experiment, success. But to-day, 
monsieur, in Loudon there is Englishmen wdio haf find 
out the very heart of nature, who laf at your wise men 
of the, East — Messieurs Taylor, Guy, Sure John IIaj‘ley, 
Sare Brodie, Messieurs Blake and Bernard. Monte Christo* ! 
Why we gif to small leetle boy in Paris or London, 


CkUEL LOiVDOh. 


835 


un elem oi the school in our laboratory, our surgery, 
our chemistry — we gif to him to manage a case of de 
Monte Christo, and he. find it out altogether.” 

Dr. Dampez slirugged his shoulders contemptuously, and 
his eyes no longer hid themselves. They sparkled in their 
depths. 

“With our. experience, our microscope, our analysis, our 
experiment physiological, our leetle frog, our Aiiglish 
patience, our treatise, our simple test, our complex test — 
with these we pull the nose of Abbe Adelmonte ; we make 
of him stuff and nonsence, as the English say — stuff and 
nonsence.” 

Dr. Darnp^ez rose |roin his seat and limped across the room, 
his hands behind his back, his head thrust forward. Com- 
ing back to his seat, he showed his teeth, and held out his 
snuff-box to Decker. 

“ What is the^-e wonderful if I gif you one pinch zat 
leetle snuff enough to make, you shut your eye to open no 
more? Kothing at all. But, if I gif it you and it leave 
no trace — if Monsieur Taylor, Doctor Guy, Sare John Har- 
ley, they come to the body and find no trace of my little 
pinch, ah, then is the wonder ! ” 

Decker paused in the action of taking a pinch between 
his thumb and finger. The doctor contemplated him 
with his small, piercing eyes, his white teeth, and his sallow, 
devilish face ; Decker shuddered. 

“ Ah ” said the doctor, closing his snuff-box, “ you would 
not have the courage to administer the leetle pinch, or the 
leetle drop, to a friend who might require to make quick 
his visit to heaven ! ” 

“ You are a keen observer, Dr. Dampez ? ” 

“ I have seen much peoples? I have looked into the 
minds of many men.” 

“ I am rather nervous to-day; I am ill, as you see.” 

“It is not necessaire to feel your pulse to know that. 

“ You are a little nervous now, and weary. Don’t you 
think we waste the time ? ” 

“ Pardon me, doctor ; and don’t be impatient. Let us 
drink. ” 

Tht doctor smiled. Decker rang twice, which was the 
signal for Davings. 

“ Two drinks, ” he said, when Davings appeared, “as 
usual. ” . 

Davings retired to his anterdora, and quickly re-ap- 


33G 


CRUEL LOXDON. 

peared with two wine-glasses full of an attractive-looking 
iquor. 

' “We call it in America a cocktail,’^ said Decker, as 
Davings left the room. 

“ I know him, he is good,^’ said the doctor, following 
Decker’s example, and drinking the compound. 

“ Would that be a good medium for a fatal dose that 
leaves no trace ? ” 

Decker looked at the doctor ; straight into the cavern- 
ous depths of his suspicious and strange eyes. 

“A fine drink — un vin magnijlque; it would be a 
charming death to die,” 

“ I do not care for a death too pleasant,” said Decker. 

“ It is not for yourself ? ” 

“ No.” 

“ Ah, I see ! ” 

“ I do not need such aid ; my end is fixed hard enough.” 

The doctor weighed out a pinch of snuff and took it 
with great deliberation. 

“ It seemed to me as you read your evidence, and also 
from your comments as you proceeded, that you do not 
think it difficult to paralyze the body, control the action of 
the tongue, freezing the very speech as if at the moment of 
articulation, and that the brain may still be active, the 
mind at work, almost to the point of death.” 

“ You are recovering.” 

“ In what way ? ” 

“Your courage is returning to you. Order for us, 
monsieur, one more quantity of that sublime wine of the 
cocktail, and we shall get on.” 

Davings was summoned ; the dose was repeated. 

“Well,” said the doctor, “ you have described some- 
thing like what I can do ; what they suspect was done in 
the Longville case, and which English savants have not yet 
discover ; it is the one principal secret they haf not prove ; 
it is a secret known to me. But it cannot last ; they find 
out all things in London, as in Paris. But, my dear pupil, 
you miss out the great wonder, which is — no detection. 
Now let us consider the family of the leetle pill you want, 
and then you can take your choice for the experiment in 
your leetle rabbit or your leetle friend. Now look you, 
there is the narcotic which give stupor ; your belladonna, 
hyosciainus niger, which make for you delirium ; your 
harmless aconite, tobacco ; digitalis and the Calabar bean. 


CRUEL LONDON. 


837 


which procure for you paralysis or loss of muscular power 
— an effect I have studied much. Then there is strichnia, 
which your Monsieur Palmer use well at first, and then 
careless ; it get you the tetanic spasms a horrible and a 
vulgar death. There is arsenic, with its infiammatory 
effects ; mercury and cantharides, well known, and only fit * 
for rats — they should nevaire be used for a human being. 
Antimony make for the lungs ; manganese and copper kfil 
through the liver ; chromate of potash attack the conjunc- 
tiva, iodine the lymphatic glands; phosphorus is insidious, 
and brings on that fatty degeneration which might be 
ascribe to natural causes but for the luminosity of the body 
after death ; spurred rye is not so well known ; and lead 
make for the muscles an enemy destructive. But all these 
show themselves in their action, and when it is all ovaire 
we find their remains ; they leaf behind their handwriting, 
which science can read.” 

Dr. Dampez took a pinch of snuff, and smiled with his 
lips. 

“ It is the effect I am thinking of, more than the dis- 
covery of the means,” said Decker. 

. “You would like your leetle rabbit or your pet dog to 
linger, to make a quiet and interesting coupe f You must 
then describe to your professor the efect as you wish it to 
be ; we shall then considaire.” 

He looked at Decker and held out his box. 

“ It is easy erfbugh, toxicology in a rough way, and you 
make the end almost with what you like, — the innocent 
salts of Epsom, the Godfrey’s cordial ; but the grand study 
of the science, where it deal with the delicate anatomy, the 
brain, the blood, and the wonderful organization, if it be 
the leetle rabbit or the human kind, it is for the savant., the 
student, the travellaire ovaire many lands, who know the 
fiower and the herb and the mineral of all countries as an 
open book, who say to the Ilelleborus foetidus, ‘Oh, how 
is your amiable sister, Ilelleborus orientalis f ’ who know 
the dispositions of each member of the grand family ; who 
can say to the Cicuta virosa, ‘ Ah, you have a classic his- 
tory, which, dates back to Athens, and you are more famous 
and hiore deadly than your relative, Philandrium equati- 
cum^ It is the grand science of the philosophers who 
look deep into the well of the knowledge, who know- every 
variation of le champignon — the simple and the poison, the 
minerals in their multifarious forms, the alkalies, the car- 


338 


CRUEL LONDON. 


bonates, the acids, the salts of the alkalies, and the earth, 
metallic irritants, their powers individual, their effects com- 
bined, arsenic, antimony, mercury, zinc, silver, bismuth. 
Ah, IMonsieur Decker, you enter a wide, wide field, when 
you commence your research into the wonderii' of toxi- 
cology!” ' '' 

“And you. Monsieur le Docteur,” said Deckeiv unin- 
tentionally falling into the grandiloquent style of the 
tutor, “you, sir, begin to live when' the pupil at your feet 
can load you with riches. Listen, my friend,* I aiii a man 
of business. You can see in my face that I have not ntany 
years to live, and you will the better undei'stand that' I 
have no time to waste. To do justice to your scientific 
tuition I should want a quarter of a century {idded to my 
future years. Since that cannot be, I must have the bene- 
fit of your researches. Ten thousand pounds — fifty thous- 
and — are of no moment to me ; but I waht thJit c'ompound 
you referred to in your evidence, I want youi‘*skill, I want 
to command your assistance. Do I make myself under- 
stood now ?” 

“ Quite, monsieur ; I haf been waiting for you'to make up 
your mind to gif me your full confidenc'e. Command me, 
as if we were in that East you speak of — you the grand 
monarch, I the miuister, who only knows your* will. 

But ” ' ' 

Dr. Dam pcz paused. ‘ ” 

“ Yes, well ?” ' ' 

“ We must not meet again here. It was not wise! came, 
nor perhaps to speak to that Mr. Tee Doubleyou, as he calls 
himself. But he is your servant. I shall gif you wliat you 
require. I shall do for yOu all you wish. You come to my 
room ; I gif you the address in Soho. Corrie with a differ- 
ence; say a leetle beard like this, perhaps.” ^ ' 

He drew from his breast-pocket a package. 1 It contained 
a false beard which the doctor fastened upon h is' own chin. 

“ Anything that will disguise a leetle. Well, you COino ; 
I gif you back this draft ; you bring me the money, and do 
not wait for the end of the v-eek. I will take all you gif 
in one sum, at one time, in notes and gold, and gif* yo'u 
entire satisfaction.” f : ■ n bf* 

“ You are a business man, doctor.” v ; 

“There are now two business mans.” ■' i 

“ When shall I come? ” 

“At once ; I am ready.” ’ 


CRUEL LONDON. 


339 


“ To-morrow night, at ten.” 

• “ Bien ! you will find me Nombre 20, Rue James. I shall 
be waiting at ten to open the door ; I haf no servant — I only 
trust myself and my patients.^’T-i 



i ■ . J : •'«: 

' -1 ' 





BOOK IX. 


> cilAPERI. 

b-.- 

i: PUPPETS WORKED WITH GOLDEN WIRES/ • • 

-* . DuRTNG/the week of his friend’s visit to Paris, Tristram 
Decker sat in his chambers pulling the wires of his various 
pu))pets; and making them dance to his entire satisfaction. 

I The, : Californian mine-owner had not reckoned without 
his host. He had not altogethei' over-estimated the value of 
money. No city in the world acknowledges its potency 
more prom j)tly than London. It is true there are some few 
things money cannot purchase, even in this metro)>olis. 
Decker, however, believed that everything he required, ex- 
ce])t health and a reversal of past inevitable events, could 
be bought.' ' * V 

Monsieur Favart came and took up his quarters at Pall 
Mall East over the rooms occupied by Decker; but onlyfor 
twenty-four hours. f 

Within three days of receiving his^original instructions, 
he had 'brought Decker the full. particulars of William Gra- 
ham Denton’s death and burial, which did not differ in 
any notal)le detail fri>m the sufficient though brief account 
already in the possession of the reader. More than this, he 
had placed in his employer’s hands a certified copy of the 
registration of tlie marriage of Caroline Virginia Denton to 
Pliilip Gardner, at Birmingham, bearing out Brayford’s 
theoiiy of the registration having taken place at some large 
city within easy access of Essam. Sparcoe, being consulted 
on this, confirmed the opinion of Maclosky Jones, expressed 


CRUEL LONDON. 


M4n' 

on that memorable day when Caroline left The Cottage, 
that a false name would not vitiate the marriage, identifica- 
tion being established. Dorothy Migswood had gone to 
live with an old sweetheart, who was employed in the 
London Docks. 

The confirmation of Caroline’s marriage, even though Tom 
Sleaford had disguised it under a false name, for a little 
time shook Decker’s plans, and left him in a condition of 
uncertainty as to what might be the best course to pursue, 
not simply in regard to his own feelings, but for the honor 
and dignity of the woman to whom ho was ready to sacrifice 
his life in the present and his hopes of heaven if he had 
any, in the future. It occurred to him, like a flash of light 
passing over his gloomy thoughts, that if there were any- 
thing of the angel left in Tom Sleaford’s nature, perhaps it 
might be possible to re-unite the man and woman whom 
God or the law had joined, establishing the credit and repu- 
tation of old Denton’s daughter, and giving to her son an 
honorable heritage and a name. 

This gleam of light was immediately followed by the 
dark shadow of Caroline’s narrativ^e ; for she had told 
Decker all her story of misery and woe ; she had kneeled 
at his feet, and at the same time had confessed her love for 
him, and her hope, when she. left New York, that he would 
follow her and wait until time had softened the heart of her 
father, and new scenes had pushed back in his memory the 
recollection of his wrongs. Then it was that Decker felt 
how helpless gold is when the noblest and best aspirations 
of the heart are concerned ; and he wished the Sacramento 
and its treasures could have been wiped out, so that he had 
been left free to follow his love through the world. But 
while he dwelt fondly on this thought, the patter of little 
Willie’s feet sounded^ in his heart an alarm of hatred, and 
awoke within his nature all that was cruel and revengeful. 
He Was tossed on a sea of passion and remorse, with the 
feeling that there was only one port to steer for, and that 
it lay open for his entrance. The harbor was full of foul 
shapes. His welcome there would be heralded in the de- 
moniacal laughter of unholy spirits, and he would pay the 
pilot with that piece of ore which had blood upon it. Those 
days at the Gulch came back to him. “ There’s blood upon 
it.” He remembered the remark, and it seemed as if the 
piece of red-looking quartz grew before him, a rock stained 
with bloody footsteps. 


CRUEL LONDON, 


841 ‘ 


Decker’s . constitution required additional stimulant 
every day. He built himself up with tonics. He kept body 
and soul together by artificial means. It was like working 
high-pressure engines beyond their highest power. He 
knew it, and he was continually preparing for the inevitable 
result. 

“ I intended originally,” he said to Monsieur Favart, on 
the fifth day of his agent’s return, “to request your services 
in Boulogne or Paris, to unearth the husband of a deserted 
lady, but during your absence he has been delivered into 
my hands. It is curious how the smallest things, the most 
trifling incidents, may change one’s plans. Mr. Topper 
Wingfield mentioned in the course of conversation an ap- 
parently trifling circumstance in his experiences of criminal 
life. It started me on a new track; it led me into a fresh 
field of inquiry ; it changed my entire plans ; though neither 
he in mentioning it, nor myself in listening, had the re- 
motest thought or idea that it could affect anything we 
were discussing, or anybody with whom we were dealing. 
The mere accidental mention of a circumstance entirely 
outside our relationship will turn out to be the most im- 
portant influence in all my plans.” 

“ Do you believe anything is accidental, monsieur ? ” 
asked Favart, lighting a cigar which Decker had pressed 
upon him. 

“ I will answer you with a question. Are you a 
fatalist ? ” 

“ I am.” 

“ It is a convenient belief ; but it leaves no room for in- 
dependent action — it makes puppets of us.” 

“ What else are we ? It is only for us to take the world 
as we find it.”, 

“ Are we not responsible to a higher power? ” 

“On the contrary, it seems, to me we have claims and 
grievances against the so-called Divine authority for using 
us ill.” 

“ Are lore, revenge, friendship, hatred^ mere acts of 
volition ? Have we no control over them ? Do they come 
unbidden ? Are they exercised by some hidden and un- 
suspected decree ? ” 

“ Monsieur interprets my own views.” 

“ I am then a mere instrument in the hands of Fate ? ” 

“ Certainly.” 

“What are my brains for, then. Monsieur Favart — my 


342 


CRUEL LONDON, 


feelings, my sentiments ? 1 do not quite go with yon. It 
seems to me that the soul of a man is like the engines of a 
steamer, they propel the craft — the captain is the directing 
brain.” 

“And the tides and currents and the ocean, may they 
not still represent Fate? I once waited at Melbourne for a 
grand capture. He came over in a sailing vessel. Fate 
was against me. That ship went to the bottom.” 

“ And is Fate such a bungler that an entire ship’s crew 
and passengers must go down because the death of one man 
was requisite? ^Why, that is as bad as the people who, to 
remove some grass that was growing at the base of a church 
stee})le, pulled down the steeple itself. No, no. Monsieur 
Favart, you may think like that in Europe, but we Ameri- 
cans know that each man controls his own destiny. If a 
Western rowdy thought Fate had ordained he should shoot 
the man who had insulted him, and whom he meant to 
pepper, he wouldn’t do it ; he wouldn’t consent to be a mere 
tool in the hands of Fate — not he. Nor will I, Monsieur 
Favart — nor will I.” 

“ Monsieur Decker is argumentative. I accept defeat 
with the good grace, though your poet says a man con- 
vinced against his will he is of the same opinion still.” 

“ Fate had evidently ordained that several and sundry 
])ersons in this metropolis should have what we should' call 
in the States a high old time of devilry ; you and our 
allies, monsieur, will put on the break and pull them up. 
Listen a moment. This, is business. There is in this city 
a house of infamy called ‘ The Retreat,’ where a certain 
Major Wenn and Miss Isabella Weaver have been playing 
the part of Cruel Fate to young women and Good Fortune 
to themselves. They have committed one of the vilest of a 
great city’s crimes, that of diverting the golden stream of 
charity from the starving poor into their own coffers. Mr. 
Topper Wingfield, an experienced detective, tells me, that 
there is an army of Wenns and Weavers in London, who 
collect not less than a million and a half to' two millions a 
year, ostensibly for the poor, and by a system of ingenious 
diqdicity continue to live upon it themselves idle, debauched 
lives, and to die in the odor of sanctity. Is that one of 
your ordinations of Fate? No, sir; Fate or Heaven, who 
or whatever it may be, is asleep. If I had twenty years 
before me, I would amuse myself by tweaking Fate’s hose, 
and morally — physically if I might — hanging all the Wenns 


CRUEL LONDON, 


843 


and Weavers tQ. the London lamp-posts. But I am wan- 
doring aw^y fronV^the subject in hand. Forcjive me. 
Through tlie aid of' one of my agents, iMajor Wenn has 
been arrested. He is locked up. and can find no hail. A 
committee of the most liberal subscribers to ‘The Retreat’ 
is in possession of that establishment. Ibit Miss ^V'eaver 
has esca])ed. Every inquiry has failed to trace her. The 
lady of charity had evidently been expecting an invitation 
to defend herself on a charge of fraud. She did not wait 
for F.ate to execute the. warrant for her arrest. She pre- 
ferred to collect together a couple of thousand pounds and 
some jewelry, and go a^<^ay. Now, Mr. Wingfield has a 
very intelligent ally in a long inquiring proboscis ; but he 
and T. W. are at fault. I have a presentiment that they 
will continue so. I think it a pity that Fate should deprive 
Major Wenn of companionshi]) in the dock, and I want you 
to assist Fate in regard to Weaver, instead of hioking up 
Mr. Phili])' Gardner. I feel sure Mademoiselle Weaver 
will not elude you.” 

Decker leaned his head against the half-open window, 
which was filled with flowers. lie coughed painfully. 
When the paroxysm wuas over, he lighted another cigar, 
and sat down, intimating by his gestures that Monsieur 
Favart should pay no attention to the trifling physical in- 
terruption, which only reminded him that there was not too 
much time to waste in regard to their mutual arrangements. 

Here is the, lady’s photograph,” said Decker ; “ she is 
a fine woman.” 

“Very,” said Favart, regarding the photograph intently. 
“It is a face easy to .recognize.” 

“ Ilave you seen it before? ” 

“I do not think it. Who holds the warrant for her 
arrest?” ■ ^ / ‘ 

“Mr. Wingfield, of Scotland Yard.” 

“ Good. I may act in this matter altogether untram- 
melled by other persons or other inquiries ? ” 

“ Quite.” ' ^ ' 

“From what you say I judge she has left England.” 

“I should think so.” 

“ Anticipating the storm, she has possibly been making 
ready for her departure for some time ?” 

“ No doubt.” " 

“ I may be away from London a few weeks before you 
hear from me.” 


344 


CRUEL LONDON. 


So long?” 

“ Monsieur is impatient for her capture.” 

“ Very impatient. She is a fiend in petticoats.” 

“ That is not a rarity.” 

“ Indeed. I know nothing about women.” 

“ Monsieur has been saved a world of trouble.” 

“ Ah, Monsieur Favart, how little we know of each other 
in this world ! All the people I have met in this metropolis 
envy me for my wealth, even though they cannot fail to 
see death in my face. And I would give all I possess to 
wipe out the time when I was making that fortune. I 
sliould have been occupied in a very different way, and 
probably have been living in a garret, but I should have 
been happy. But, there, I will not trouble you with my 
affairs. I only wanted to say that it is a mistake for any 
man to envy another, or to think that he can altogether 
judge his acquaintance by his own experience.” 

“ You are not happy. Monsieur Decker. Perhaps it is 
that you view life too seriously.” 

“ Are you happy ? ” 

“ Oh yes.” 

“ What makes you happy ?” 

“ Money and success.” 

“ Have I made you happy ? ” 

“ V ery much.” 

“ It is gratifying to know that.” 

“ You despise me at first. You think me a mere spy.” 

“ Oh no. I beg your pardon, Monsieur Favart, if I hurt 
your feelings.” 

“ Ah, well, that is all over. A man dignifies his profes- 
sion by his mode. I am never cruel. I give the hare, when 
I hunt him, a fair chance. When it is merely a diplomatic 
secret I have to find, I slay him like a game at chess. When 
I find that Registry yesterday, I thrill with delight, though 
the game was easy.” 

“ Life is a puzzle.” 

“ But death, monsieur, tha-t is the great enigma.” 

“ Do you think so ? ” 

“ I do not like the day when I shall be called upon to 
solve it.” 

“ It is only a long rest, Favart ; don’t be afraid, you go 
to sleep, and sleep longer than usual, that’s all. I shall lie 
down contentedly soon. And that reminds me, my friend, 
if you find it necessary in your absence to draw upon me. 


CR URL L ON-DON. 34') 

do so. Don't give Weaver an advantage in the chase to 
save expense. If I don’t see you within the next seven 
days, rep(>i*t to me twice or thrice' every day of your pro- 
gress, your hopes, and ” 

“ My success, monsieur,” said Favart. “ I shall find 
Mademoiselle Weaver.” 

“Buncher, sir — I’m Buncher,” in a husky voice said a 
slouching man, who had entered the room as Mr. Decker 
and Monsieur Favart parted. 

“ Oh yes, of course. Take a seat, Buncher.” 

“ I found ’er, sir,” he said, jerking his right shoulder 
forward. 

“ Good for you, Mr. Buncher.” 

“ LoF, ain't she a stunner, too? A regular out-and- 
outer ! ” 

“Yes?” 

“ Come to town, sir, with five ’undred quid, as she 
says’ er missus giv’ ’er. Comes up, sir, to a old pal as 
worked at the Docks ; and they ups and takes a small public- 
’ouse near Dock ’£d, sir ; and in less nor six months turns 
’er out into the street, ’e does, an’ knocks ’er teeth out, sir, 
an’ is nigh havin’ to answer for ’er death. She ’as ’im up 
and gives ’im three months. An’ there was a party as had 
a bill of sale in the ’ouse, an’ they sells it up, bag and bag- 
gage. Ill got, ill spent, sir. It’s a old proverb, but it’s 
true.” 

“ Ah,” said Decker, “ the little sinners get punished ; 
the great ones get off.” 

“ I dunno, sir. You knows best.” 

“ And where is she now ? ” 

“ Well, sir, when she got served out so she signified, it 
seems, that she knowed Bill Smith, of the Old Kent Road 
— Cockney Bill, as they calls him — and so they took her 
there in a cab, some of her friends ; but Bill, he said, well 
he’d know’d her once down at a place as he took possession 
of, but she was a houdacious lot, and he wasn’t goin’ to be 
troubled with her, though he didn’t mind standing a crown 
for her ; and so they took her to the workus, and there I 
see her yesterday ; and to-morrow she’s to be charged with 
tearing up her clothes and assaulting the matron, and she’ll 
get three months.” 

“ An interesting and excellent report, Mr. Buncher. 
The devil does not always take care of his own.” 


346 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“No, sir, I suppose proverbs ain’t to be relied on 
reg’lar.” 

“ Here is your money, Bunch er j it has been well 
earned.” 

Buncher took the notes with a “ Thank ye sir.” 

“ Call for me in the morning and take me to the Police 
Court where this woman is to be charged. I would like to 
see her in the dock, as you call it.” 

“ Yes, sir, certainly. Anything else, sir 
“Not at present, thank you.” 

“ Wish yer good-day, sir.” ■ 

“ Good-day.” 

# # * * ♦ * ♦ . 
“And what of this Robinson, Mr. Wingfield?” asked 
Decker, addressing his next visitor. “What does T. W. 
say to him?” - 

“T. W. is quite satisfied,” said Wingfield, patting his 
nose. “But this, business is no, ordinary matter, and if its 
stirred iij) it will bring in other people — one gentleman 
that’s a friend of yours.” 

“ Indeed ? Who is mv friend ? ” 

“Mr. Tom Sleaford.” ‘ 

“ What ! ]My friend ! ” exclaimed Decker, losing all 
control over himself, and grasping a chair for su)>port. 

“I’m sorry I’ve in.ade you feel ill sir,” said Wingfield. 
“I mean that he used to be a friend of Mr. Kerman — the 
Squire, as he was called — and he’s a friend .of yonrs, I 
think?” - 

“Yes, yes! Well?” 

“ Yo see, sir, when T. W. gets poking about and in- 
quiring into things, yo should’nt blame him if the whole 
thing comes out ? ” 

“No. Go on.” 

“ Well, yo must know Mr. Robinson, Mr. Sleaford and 
some others were mixed up with transactions that have 
been S(|uared.” 

“ Who are others ? ” 

“Not S(]uire Kerman,. and not Mr. Ila/ry Brayford, 
you may be sure; they wei-je the dupes.” . ' 

“ You seem to have studied this thing all round,” said 
Decker, now recovering his self-possession. 

“ T. W.’s a devil when he’s once got on the scent of 
things,” VYingfield replied. i , 


CRUEL I.ONDOM. 


847 


“You have not been talking about me ? ” 

“ No.” 

“Yet you seem to understand that I like Kerman and 
Brayford.” 

“ Oh, yes.” 

“ How did you know that T knew Kerman ? ” 

“ Oh, easy enough ; learnt that in the City.” 

“How?” 

“ Yo won’t use what I tell yo ? ” 

“ No.” 

“ I have an old Lancashire friend at Nathan’s.” 

“You don’t think it necessary to pry into my affairs 
when you are inquiring into those of Robinson ? ” 

“ Not at all, sir ; but in rny business we get into the 
habit, yo see, of putting this and that together.” 

“ And you keep your secret— T. W. and yourself, eh? 
There are only you two in the partnership ? Is that so ? ” 

“ T. W. and me is one, and what we know we know,” 
said Wingfield. “ If yore confidence in me is shaken be- 
cause I’ve got to know too much, sack me.” 

Mr. Wingfield drew himself up with a defiant look at 
Decker. 

“You startled me a little, that’s all.” 

“I’m Lancashire,” said Wingfield, “though I’ve been 
in London a good many years ; and when a Lancashire 
man takes a business in hand and means it, he does mean 
it, and you’ve gotten to trust him or chuck him up ; that’s 
what I’ve gotten'^to say to yo, Mr. Decker.” 

“Yes, yes,” said Decker impatiently. “Don’t let us 
h^ve any spreadeagleism — I understand.” 

“ That’s ole right, if yo understand. No offence, sir, 
but the confidence mnst not be ole on one side.” 

“ Very well ; now, what is your advice, Mr. Lanca- 
shire?” 

“ Wingfield, sir, Wingfield.” 

“ What does T. W. advise ? ” 

“ Mr Brayford can prosecute,” said Wingfield, “ and he 
is willing to do so.” 

“ You have seen him, then ? 

“ I have. Was that wrong?” 

“ No. Pray don’t be so ill-tempered, Wingfield, Have 
a drink ? ” 

“ Not now. Beg pardon, I was a bit ruflied.” 


348 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“ Well, you saw Brayford, and ” 

“I took him to Lawrence & Lawrence, the famous 
company lawyers.” 

« Yes ? ” 

“ They said there was a good case, but it would cost a 
lot of money to fight,” 

“ And you told them ” 

“ That there was any amount ready for purpose, and 
that the case was to be worked on public grounds ; and I 
said that Mr. 3rayford had friends who meant to support 
him in ridding the public of a fashionable city swindler.” 

“Very good, Mr. Wingfield.” 

“And to-morrow, sir, you will just put Mr. Brayford 
into financial position strong enough to retain Lawrence 
& Lawrence, and we shall get a warrant to arrest Mr. 
Fitzherbert Robinson.” 

“ Mr. Wingfield, you are a smart man.” 

“ Lawrence & Lawrence think Mr. Maclosky Jones 
can only be touched by a civil action; but I hope to give 
them a bit of evidence to-morrow about that canny Scot 
which may just open the door of Bow Street wide enough 
for him as well as Robinson.” 

“ Wingfield, I forgive you,’^ said Decker, smiling. “ Let 
us shake hands.” 

Wingfield put out his hand in a shamefaced way, over- 
come by Decker’s frank, genial manner. 

“ I am a hasty sort of chap,” he said. “ I beg your 
pardon for losing my temper.” 

“It was my fault,” said Decker; “and you couldn’t 
bear a word of criticism, knowing how well you had done 
your work. Say no more about it. Keep on, Wingfield, 
keep on ; I will supply Mr. Brayford with funds. Pile 
on the coal, keep the engines going ; I won’t detain you a 
moment ; do your work. I’ll do my part.” 

The soft June wind came through the flowers in the 
window, as if to woo Decker into a tender frame of mind 
when the man and woman hunters had gone forth to join 
the great human processions in the streets. London was in 
her gayest attire, and there was a blue sky overhead. But 
Decker’s thoughts were at Boulogne. He would hurry his 
departure thither. Mr. Topper Wingfield might plunge still 
deeper into secrets which he regarded as his. He would 
call at the West End Bank of Deposit to find if Mr. Tom 
Sleaford was in Paris or Boulogne; he would say farewell 


CRUEL LONDON. 


349 


to Caroline ; he would leave a letter for Kerman excusing 
his absence from the wedding ; and leaving the trains of 
powder all laid for systematic explosion, in regard to the 
legal processes which had been well and successfully com- 
menced, he would now make the acquaintance of Tom Slea- 
ford, alias Philip Gardner. 

Received by an old familiar colored-nurse, by a butler 
from the South, and surrounded with every indication of 
wealth and comfort, Mrs. Gardner, when she awoke the 
morning following her arrival at Lancaster Gate, felt like 
one who has just come out of a bad dream. If she had 
fallen into a low, depressed condition, under the influence of 
adverse fortune, her spirit appeared to rebound with the 
change. It was as if the dark face touched some long silent 
chord that started old melodies in her memory, and linked 
the present with the past, bridging over with delicious music 
the black unhappy interval. Old in experience, her heart 
W'as still young. She fairly ran from one room to the other 
in what seemed to her a fairy palace. Drawing-room, 
library, winter-garden, studio, she lingered here and there 
like a butterfly in a newly-found garden of floral treasures. 
Tears of joy hung upon the dark fringe of her black eyes, 
and the parted lips uttered vague words of joy. Then she 
would go to little Willie in the nursery, where Chloe sung 
lullabies as she did in the old days ; and here her happiness 
would suffer eclipse. She would sit down and cry, and 
lose herself in wondering efforts to recall the past and trace 
out the story of her life. Then would the pale face of 
Decker steal into the eye of her mind, and her longing 
heart would cry aloud for that oblivion of the past which 
she knew, by an instinctive understanding of Decker’s 
nature, could alone unite two souls which Fate had thrust 
asunder. Thus it was . with Caroline Gardner in her new 
home. She had alternative fits of happiness and melancholy, 
but, as Decker had told her, time and the exercise of a 
generous disposition in benevolent acts would bring her 
peace of mind, which was, after all, the truest happiness. 

It was a sad parting, that of Decker with Caroline. 

“We shall meet again,” he said. “ I dreamed that he 
was dead, Caroline ; that your marriage was proved ; that 
3'’ou were a widow ; and I thought that my time had come 
too, and you consented to go through the world with my 


350 


CRUEL LONDON. 


name ; and that little Willie was rechristened, and you 
called him Tristram Decker.” 

He looked earnestly at her as he spoke, and she noticed 
that his face had grown thinner, even in a week ; that the 
flush upon his cheek was hectic ; that his complexion was 
almost fair ; and she was afraid. 

You do not speak, Caroline. If it were as I say would 
you marry me, so that, if there should be a future state, I 
might claim you in the world to come ? ” 

“ Why wait for dreams and the world to come?” she 
said, in a passion of emotion. “ Take me now, Tristram ; I 
am yours, and none other’s. Oh, if you could but forgive 
me ! ” 

She buried her face in her hands and sobbed. He laid 
his hand gently upon her head, and soothed her with soft 
and gentle words. 

“ Listen, Caroline,” he said presently. 

She looked up at him with the expression of a child 
under the direction of a loving 2:)arent. 

“Your words comfort me, and make me strong; but 
listen. I want to look deeper into your heart. Listen, my 
poor child. If I brought you that same certificate of mar- 
riage, all in order ” ^ 

“Yes,” she said, nodding her pretty head, from which a 
raven plait had fallen upon her shoulders ; “ I am listen- 

ing-” 

“ And supposing I brought him, Philip Gardner, repent- 
ant at your feet, to have your marriage proclaimed and 
your husband for a companion through life ? ” 

She shrank from him as he spoke, and answered him 
at last with a cry. 

“ Oh no, no, nevei* ! I can die, so can Willie. We can 
both die with you, when you have |)roved our innocence. 
Purify the name of Caroline Denton from the stain that 
cruel Fate has put upon it ; let it be known that Willie has 
the right to be here; that the name of Denton is above dis- 
honor ; and then ” 

She brushed the tears from her eyes, and looked stead- 
fastly at Decker. 

“ And then we can die ; but we can never live with 
Philip Gardner again.” 

“ But,” said Decker, struggling to appear calm, “ even 
now you would have had me remain here, and defy all the 
laws of ” 


CRUEL LONDON. 


351 


I know, I know what you would say ; hut I am only a 
woman, and I love you, Tristram. What would be dishonor 
where love is not, becomes virtue where love is ; true self- 
sacrificing, devoted love.” 

“ My dear Caroline ! ” exclaimed Decker, snatching her 
to his arms, “ you almost make me wish to live. Farewell, 
till we meet again.” 

The next moment he was gone ; and, with his kisses still 
warm upon her lips, Caroline looked up vacantly, as if her 
eyes sought something in the room. 

“ No,” she said, “it was not a dream ; and yet he is not 
here.” 


CHAPTER II 

HOME AGAIN. 

Golden summer, yellow with buttercups, bright with 
the flowers of the mustard seed, green with waving corn, 
genial breezes full of humming sounds and sweet perfumes. 
Manor Farm, with its broad, straggling old house, slumbered 
in the sun. The great LincolnsWre flat, indeed, seemed all 
asleep, like a laborer lying by the roadside at noon. The tall 
grasses in the dykes moved gently, as if they whispered to 
the dragon flies that balanced themselves on their airiest 
stems. The blue smoke of the old house went up in two 
long columns to the blue sky. Here and there, far away in 
the distance, other homesteads could be seen, with a few 
trees clustering round the stackyajds, and a poetic sugges- 
tion of summer haze hung about the picture as if to “vig- 
nette ” it, as the engraver treats a sketch on the wood. 

Mr. and Mrs. Kerman had come from Paris and London. 
Tristram Decker did not go to the wedding, but he had 
loaded Jane with marriage gifts. Mrs. Gardner was pres- 
ent, an.d she had accompained them home. Kerman had 
said that he would rather keep the honeymoon at the Farm 
than at any other place, and Jane was so overjoyed at her 
husband’s longing to be back again in the old county, that 
they came almost straight home from the altar, Mrs. Gard- 
ner and little Willie travelled with them, attended by Chloe, 


352 


CRUEL LONDON, 


the colored nurse, and a maid. The beautiful southern 
woman had fallen with quick facility into her new mode of 
life in London. She had been so accustomed to luxury as 
a young girl, that she returned to the habits of wealth with 
an easy, familiar grace. Her house at Lancaster Gate soon 
became one of the best regulated as well as the most per- 
fectly appointed establishments in London. Little Willie 
was growing up into a fine, handsome boy, and he occupied 
his mother’s chief attention. She found continual delight 
in his happiness. Sometimes a stranger, contemplating her 
life, might think she had not a care in the world, and had 
never known a heartache. But she had her fits of dejjres- 
sion as well as of elation. Her ambition, her hopes, her 
joys centred in little Willie, who possessed all his mother’s 
warm, loving nature. She seemed rather to dream her ex- 
istence away than have a share in the activities of life. Be- 
fore her easel, at the piano, driving in the park, at her 
devotions on Sunday, she seemed to live in a world of her 
own ; and looking into her soft, loving eyes, you could see 
that it was not an unpleasant world. 

On this summer day in the drawing-room at Manor 
Farm, with the windows all open, and outer blinds protect- 
ing them from the sun, were assembled John and Jane, and 
Mrs. Gardner and little Willie. Jane, buxom and happy to 
the tip of her fingers, was sitting upon a low chair by her 
husband, who was talking and rocking himself to and fro in 
an American chair. Mrs. Gardner was sitting by one of the 
open windows, her eyes resting upon her two friends in a 
lialf attentive, half dreamy way. In a corner of the room 
Chloe and little Willie ( the child partly reclining upon a 
bundle of cushions) were turning over the leaves of a great 
book of pictures. 

Kerman was relating his adventures. He never tired of 
l ecalling the past. Jane was always ready to listen. Mrs. 
Gardner’s attention never wandered for a moment when 
Kerman dealt with events in which Tristram Decker’s 
name was mentioned. It was a happy, lazy time, and it 
brought to Caroline’s mind the few glimpses of calm 
content which had stolen at odd moments into her existence 
in the Vale of Essam. It was Jane’s turn to let her atten- 
tion wander a little, or to pretend not to listen all the 
time, when John told Mrs. Gardner the story of Uncle 
Martin’s will and his desertion of Jane. This plain nar- 
rative of a woman’s devotion was brought to a fitting 


CRUEL LONDON. 


358 


termination with an old box, which John insisted upon hav- 
ing on a pedest^il in the entrance hall as a memento of Uncle 
Martin s goodness and a warning to assurance and pride, 
riie letter which it had contained was a touching example 
of tlie old man’s kind heart, and a sharp illustration of his 
worldly knowledge : 

“ You are not to let John Kerman see this until you are 
married to him. If he takes after his father, he could bear 
good fortune like a man, and give it to the woman of his 
heart the same. But if he be his mother’s son he would be 
flighty about it, and apt, maybe, to forget his benefac- 
tor.” 

“ He was a clever old man,” said Kerman, pausing, 
with the faded letter in his hand, to look at Mrs. Gardner, 
“ a downright old observer. He knew me to the very 
core.” 

“Don’t say that, John. It was his love for me that 
blinded him. I always told him so,” remarked Jane. - 

“ No, no, Jane ; he knew his man. I don’t want to say 
that I was a particularly bad fellow, Mrs. Gardner,” said 
Kerman, “ but I was a fool, and under the influence of false 
pride. But listen now to this dear old agricultural philos- 
opher, — 

“ If I left all to you and none to him, he would fret 
under his obligation to you, for he does not think of you as 
loving as you of him. A true woman loves a man ; it is 
everything ; nothing shakes it ; a man has other ideas ; he 
can shoot and hunt, or labor, and find the pleasure of hunt- 
ing in making money and hoarding it up as I have. If 
John do not love you, it w'ould be misery to you if he was 
not well off. Suppose he do love you, then he would be 
proud to share his money and land with yours. I have be- 
haved bad to him. It was something like being jealous, I 
think, and then he was always so independent ; he would 
never bend, and he was always right, doing every stroke of 
his work to the last. If he had been a bit humble like, 
maybe it would have pleased me, and I had a mort of 
sorrow in my old heart nobody knew of, which maybe I 
tried to keep out of sight by damning and going on, when 
I could as soon have cried as swore.” 


354 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“ Poor old man ! ” said Kerman, while a tear trickled 
down Jane’s rosy cheek. 

“ ‘ It’s a mortal pity w^ are not strong enough to tell 
the truth and shame the devil, until we think we be come 
to our last Harvest Home ; but it’s no good thinking that 
now. So Jane, my dear girl, I have left property in such a 
way that Jack, if he be minded to do what is right, will 
soon change your mourning gown to a wedding dress ; and 
if he be proud and the like, well, you will have enough, and 
so will he ; and I make no doubt, if he do go wrong and 
trip a bit, it may come right later on. Way I have left 
money, howsomever, will try him, and show what he’s made ^ 
of, and Jabez Thompson, my dear old friend, though a 
lawyer, he will take care as no harm comes to you. You 
will be surprised at all the property which is now yours, 
but it has been my only care for years and years to accumu- 
late it. God bless you, Jane, my good, kind girl, and my 
first prayer, since I was a young man, is for your happiness. 
Amen, and good-by. 

“ ‘Ephraim Martin.’ ” 

“ The dear old boy ! ” said Kerman, folding up the letter 
and putting it back into his pocket-book ; “ he looked a 
long way ahead, and thank God it has all come right at 
last ! ” 

A knock at the door brought old Goff upon the scene. 

“ Missus thinks it’s time carriage went to Burgh to meet 
folk as is coming by afternoon train,” said the old man, 
looking at Kerman ; “ and she says should I go w'ee it ? ” 

“Yes, Goff,” said Kerman, looking at his watch; “Mr. 
and Mrs. Tavener may be expected at Burgh in a couple of 
hours. Go with Peter to the station by all means.” 

“I will,” said Goff. 

This interruption changed the drift of the conversation, 
which now turned upon the Taveners, and thence to Bray- 
ford and the Retreat. 

Mrs. Gardner told the story of her escape from Miss 
Weaver, and the rescue by Brayford, and the kindness of 
the Aarons. The Southern woman spoke as if she was ad- 
dressing little Willie in the hayfield at Essam. There was 
an unaffected originality in her method, an almost epigram- 
matic force in her sentences, whicli in an orator would have 
been the result of study. It was almost like listening to a 


CRUEL LONDON. 


355 


reading to hear Caroline, in her innocent, i^icturesque way, 
talk of her father’s New Jerusalem, the house of bondage, 
and the persecutor who would not let the children go. She 
had the Egyptian history of the chosen in her mind, when 
she dwelt upon her early troubles in London, and her de- 
scription of the blameless long life of the Jew-Christian 
household in High Street, Marylebone, was idyllic in its 
tender passages of grateful appreciation. 

The moment Caroline began to speak, Chloe’s ears were 
opened, and her black face looked up from child to mother. 
When her mistress came to the latter part*of the story, 
which was as new to the Kermans as it was to Chloe, the 
old servant found it difficult not to scream aloud her satis- 
faction. She compromised the point by hugging little 
Willie. The Kermans had not heard of the arrest of Major 
Wenn and the exposure of the Weaver frauds. Caroline 
was now enabled to finish the narrative with the news of 
Wenn’s conviction and sentence to five years’ transporta- 
tion, and Mr. Fitzherbeft Robinson’s committal for trial in 
connection with some City frauds, on the clearest possible 
evidence. 

It was left, however, for Mr. Fred Tavener to supply 
almost the last threads of the narrative of the working of 
the just punishment which had overtaken some of the 
wicked people in this romance. Neither he nor Kerman 
suspected who had pulled the strings and enforced the 
action of tardy justice. It was after dinner on this quiet 
summer day that the two men sat over a bottle of claret 
and talked of recent events. The women had retired to 
have a delightful chat all to themselves. 

“ It occurred a week ago,” said Tavener, “ and last night 
I had a letter about it. Emily has no idea that it w^as so 
serious. She has always been used to her father in money 
difficulties, and she thinks he has gone to avoid the service 
of a writ. Roper saved the old man. A warrant, it 
appears, was issued for the arrest of old Sleaford whose 
Bank of Discount and Deposit turns out to be not quite 
correct. When it was found Sleaford had left town for Paris 
it was concluded that he had levanted. He was expected 
home in a week. Instead, he returned the next day, and 
the clerk to the magistrate who issued the warrant, being 
an old friend of Roper’s, and knowing that he was about to 
marry Patty, gave him a hint. Roper, finding from Mrs. 
Sleaford that the old man had gone to see his son, started 


356 


CRUEL LONDON. 


after him ; and as luck would have it, met him at Victoria 
Station returning. Sleaford gave him a pitiable account of 
a quarrel he had had with his son, which had ended in that 
scoundrel, Tom, knocking his father down and kicking him 
into the street. So he had returned to London, he said, to 
bring his gray hairs with sorrow to the grave. Roper told 
him quietly of the danger that threatened him, and Sleaford, 
ill an utter state of collapse, left himself in Roper’s hands to 
do the best for him. They came to my house in a four- 
wheeler. Emily had gone to see Patty. TVe put a wig on 
the old man’s bald head, and otherwise converted him into 
something quite unlike his original self, and last night I had 
a letter from Roper, written en route ^ to say that they 
would be safe in Spain, outside English laws and extradition 
treaties, by the time I received the letter.” 

“ A clever fellow that Roper. By the sacred stars and 
stripes — as Decker would say — you surprise me. It is a 
pity somebody does not wring Tom Sleaford’s neck.” 

John Kerman looked for a moment as if he would not 
object to do it himself ; but his face resumed its expression 
of calm geniality almost at once. 

“I don’t know,” he said. “ Perhaps it’s better to leave 
a scoundrel to his fate. I don’t believe God leaves the 
punishment of a bad lot like Tom Sleaford till after he’s 
dead. But I forgot, Mr. Tavener, pray forgive me — after all 
he’s your wife’s brother.” 

“He is none the less scamp and worse,’ said Tavener 
“ but I feel obliged for her sake to think of that. Sooner 
or later he must come to some terrible grief. Roper tells 
me he is living an infamous life of knavery, and I confess 
it made my heart ache to see his father cry, as he begged 
me to be careful because his cheek and jaw were bruised, 

“ Poor old wn*etch ! he is not the sort of a man. one ought 
to pity, Tavener, but somehow I should, even if I did not 
think of his two girls, one your wife, the other once on the 
way to be mine. I suppose he couldn’t help doing shady 
things. Perhaps it is because one has plenty of money that 
ceases to be resentful, He took me in, Tavener, to a pretty 
tune. But, there, we’ve wiped out all that long since. 
What we have got to do now is to make things as pleasant 
as we can.” 

“ Just so ; I am glad that is your view.’ 

“ He can’t come back to England again I, presume ?” 

“ I think not.” 


CRUEL LONDON. 


857 


“ It will all come out, T suppose, presently in the papers?” 

“ I fear so.” 

“ Can’t we settle the business ? ” 

“ You can’t sette fraud — They call it compounding a 
felony.” 

“ f Decker were here, he would disagree with you. 
suppose we could do something by restitution ? I mean by 
giving back money wrongfully obtained ? ” 

“No doubt we could.” 

“Telegraph to Roper, and ask him to come down here. 
Don’t you think that would be the best way to begin ? I sup- 
pose he will return the moment he has landed Sleaford 
safely in Spain ? ” 

“ Yes, that he will, not only to get married, but to con- 
sult with me as to the next step. I ought to go back to 
London.” 

“ No I won’t listen to that. Let us telegraph to Roper.” 

“ Very well.” 

Kerman rang the bell, and a few minutes afterwards a 
servant was galloping to Burgh with a message. 

“ If there is any public exposure, on the first suggestion 
of it,” said Tavener, “ I shall take Emily to Italy and stay 
there for work a couple of years.” 

“ We will have no exposure. Jabez Thompson shall go 
up to town with a blank cheque and settle the whole thing. 
Now, that’s the best idea yet. You don’t know Thompson, 
of the firm of Thompson and Foxwell. Cleverest man in 
England. Was taken in once, it is true. Tom Sleaford 
rides well, shoots well, and is a rare hand at ‘whist. So is 
Thompson ; but that is neither here nor there. Jabez shall 
go to town. Jane shall ask him. Don’t wince. I shall tell 
her all about it, and Thompson will do anything in the world 
she asks him. He rode over to Shegwell Bay this_ morning. 
He is sure to call here on his way home.” 

“ Please, Mister Kerman, sir, the missus would like to 
see you,” said Kester, entering the room without warning, 
and in what would be regarded as an unpardonably familiar 
manner by a Belgravian master. 

“Thank you Kester. We are both to come into the 
drawing room, eh ? ” 

“ Aye, that’s about it I reckon,” said Kester, smiling. 

“ Very well, Kester ; say we will come at once.” 

Then, turning to Tavener, Kerman said he supposed his 


358 


CKUEL LONDON, 


friend would be rather shocked at the friendly sort of re- 
lationship that existed here between master and servants. 

“ Not at all ; I like it said Tavener. 

“ Goff and his wife, you see, are like old friends. I am 
going to make Goff the steward, and let him work tin* 
place. I shall build liim a house at the top of the Hundred 
Acre Close. We are going to buy Grundy Hall and the 
estate, where Dymoke, the Member of Parliament, lived. I 
can remember the time when I should have felt shamefaced 
at going into the place on a message, and if I’ d been asked 
into the parlor T should have been a good deal more awk- 
ward than Goff. And now, Tavener, I am going to buy 
the estate. Not that I think' we shall ever live there. If 
we do, it will only be until we have turned Manor Farm into 
a fine place. You see, Jane has a hobby, and it’s land. 
She is not proud, but she would like to own half the county.” 

Kerman laughed aloud at this view of Jane’s humility. 

“ And, by Decker’s stars and stripes, she shall, Mr. 
Tavener, she shall ! Pride ! She hasn’t a spark of what 
people call pride; but she has a great notion of lands and 
properties. I shall never forget when she came to London 
and tackled me about parting with land. Bless her heart ! 
she’s fond of freeholds. She’s like Uncle Martin in that. 
You will begin to think I’m a talker soon. Come, let us 
go and see the ladies, and then you shall do the talking, 
eh ? ” 

Manor Farm had never in its history seen such gay 
and festive times. The wildest dreams of Uncle Martin in 
the interest of Jane Crosby could not have framed such a 
picture of luxury and ease. Mrs. Gardner wore a dress, the 
seed-pearl trimmings of which, and the gems round her 
neck, would have purchased a flock of Kerman’s sheep and 
the fee-simple of the meadows in which they were feeding. 
Emily Tavener w’as dressed as an artist loves to see his 
wife — in a curious, pretty, out of the way style, and she sang 
merry songs as a set-off to the sweet but plaintive ditties 
which belonged to Mrs. Gardner’s repertoire. The South- 
ern woman did everything in a peculiarly original style. 
Even her songs seemed new. A familiar ballad on her lips 
found a fresh significance, and she played her own accompani- 
ments as if she made the piano sing with her, Jane Kerman, 
in what Mrs. Goff called “ a speck and span ball dress such as 
nobody ever saw" in the Marsh,” set off the Oriental loveli- 
ness of Mrs. Gardner, and also presented an advantageous 


CRUEL LONDON. 


359 


contrast to the metropolitan style of Mrs. Tavener. The 
fresh, genial, blooming beauty of Jane Kerman asserted itself 
with a frank arniabiliy that took out of it all the arrogance 
of really handsome, beaming womanhood. The two men 
— Fred Tavener, in evening dress, John Kerman, in 
a loose serge jacket — made up a group worthy of any society 
The sun had gone down and tlie windows were open to the 
long green and yellow landscape and the first red beams 
of the setting sun. 

In the relationship of these three women it seemed that 
the sorrow which Tom Sleaford had wrought among them 
had bound then! the closer together in bonds of sympathy 
and affection. They were like three sisters -who had the 
misfortune to have a bad brother and they never allowed 
themselves to talk about him though in the silent watches 
of the night his cruel shadow sometimes fell upon the dreams 
of the woman whom Fate had not saved from him, as Jane 
Crosby had been, until she had felt the bitter cruelty of 
his nature. Nevertheless, Time was making her some 
amends. Tliere is hope of sunshine forever so sad a sorrow, 
when Time has an ally in youth and health. In Caroline’s 
case these advantages were coupled with wealth and a love 
for the arts and all that is beautiful in nature. Strange to 
say, that burning desire to establish her name and maintain 
its honor had died out. She had one hope to which she 
clung. It was bound up in her love for Decker, and one 
great happiness which was not denied to her — the compan- 
ionsliip of her child, which grew day by day into a more 
absorbing and compensating pleasure. 

Her worst dreams never brought Philip Gardner back to 
her, yet he is on his way to claim his wife and take posses- 
sion of her property. 


CHAPTER IIL 

% 

A TRAGEDY. 

For nearly a whole week the wonder of a certain Paris 
gambling house was the large sums of money that an English 
captain had won from an American millionaire. Captain 
Gardner was known to be a blackleg. His associates were 
men with the hearts of fiends and the manners of gentlemen. 


360 


CRUEL LONDON. 


His chief house of resort in Paris was the residence of a 
showy woman who called herself Madame Gardner. When 
she considered an excuse necessary to account for the fact 
that the villa was her own, and that Captain Gardner did 
not live there, but was only one of her guests, she said the 
arrangement was her owm choice ; she was French, he was 
English, and they had decided upon a policy of mutual and 
individual freedom. Captain Gardner smiled satirically, 
and twirled the ends of his waxed moustache, as the keeper 
of the gambling-house thus intimated to her clients that they 
must not imagine she was unprotected. If they thought for 
a moment they could trespass upon her, she wished them 
to understand that the English captain was at her elbow. 
The truth of the relationship between the two needed no ex- 
planation. only that even tiie frequenters of the villa did not 
know that Captain Gardner and Madame Gardner were 
partners in the establishment, on a business basis by regular 
deed “ signed sealed and delivered.” 

The captain had brought Mr.Tristram Decker there as his 
particular friend, and the American had lost immense sums 
to the captain, who at the outset explained to Decker tliat 
♦ he was incognito at this place. 

“ Don’t care,” he had said, “ to have my name bandied 
about among such a set, so I call myself Gardner there.” 

Tom had said this on the day Decker called upon 
him, and in response to Decker’s wish to see something of 
Paris life. Decker had replied, — 

“ You English are so circumspect ; as for me, it doesn’t 
much matter where I am seen or who knows me. I haven’t 
many months, they say, to live, so I want to live all the 
time.” 

The wonder among the men who went to the Villa 
Adrienne was that the American should be so friendly with 
the captain. Neither the heaviest loss, nor the apparent 
contempt in which Captain Gardner held him, ruffled Mon- 
sieur Decker, who seemed as pleased when he lost as when 
he won. Then they came to the conclusion that, after allf 
Americans were just as droll as the English members of the 
same eccentric national family. A new-comer, who had 
been introduced by one of Madame Gardner’s casual visitors 
on the very day when Tristram Decker appeared, excited 
almost as much interest. He was a Turk, Fabien Pasha, a 
silent, gentle amiable old man, who soon became intimate 
with Captain Gardner and Monsieur Decker. Fabien Pash^ 


CRUEL LONDON. 


361 


spoke French fairly well, and he appeared to have plenty of 
money. He did not play high, but he evidently enjoyed 
gaming, and he gave, several private dinners at the Hetel 
Bristol, at which Captain Gardner and Tristram Decker 
were present. 

Decker had taken a suite of rooms at the Grand Hotel 
and Captain Gardner spent most of his time in the Ameri 
can’s company. Madame and some of her friends had, with 
grim humor, advised Captain Gardner to pluck the Yankee 
eagle quickly, before Monsieur Consumption claimed the fine 
bird altogether ; and the Englishman was acting upon the 
hint. 

“ You are a gay dog, Mr. Tom Sleaford,” said Decker, 
over a little dinner which they had eaten without company 
in order that the American might talk over his plans. 

“ Might as well call me Gardner,” said Tom. You may 
let the other name slip in conversation at the villa, and 
I shouldn’t like madame to hear it.” 

“ And a sly dog,’ said Decker. “ Madame, I expect, is 
not the only conquest, eh ?” 

Tom smiled a grim, cruel smile. His face was never 
a frank, open countenance ; but when we first saw it in 
Fitzroy Square it was angelic in comparison with the hard, 
sensual, and rapacious expression which had transformed it 
into a reflection of the man’s heart. As the young man had 
increased his wicked practices, so had vice registered them 
in his countenance, one by one, until the awful history could 
be read by any keen observer who cared to study the man 
and the face. 

“ Oh, I have had my innin gs ; I can’t complain,” said the 
captain. 

“ You have never been in America ? ” 

“ No.” 

“ Ah, you have an experience to come !” 

“Yes ; they tell me your women are devilish pretty.” 

“ They are : that is true.” 

“ After all, one need not cross the Atlantic to see pretty 
American women.” 

“ No. Do many of them come to England ? ” 

“ Yes, and to Paris.” 

“ Hav^e your conquests ever extended to my country- 
women ? Beware how you confess. Captain Gardner : I am 
very jealous of the honor of my compatriots, men and 
women.” 


362 


CRUEL LONDON. 


“I used to know a very pretty American woman,’ 
said Tom, as be sipped his coffee and smoked a cigarette. 

“ Ah,” said Decker, sighing,. “ don’t mention her name, or 
I might know her, and then perhaps we might not continue 
good friends.” 

“ Your patriotism is romantic,” said Tom, 

“ What was she like ? ” 

“ A brunette from the South : a beautiful girl — but a 
vixen, a regular vixen.” 

Decker pressed his feet upon the ground and closed his 
teeth. 

“ But Fabien Pasha’s is the right idea, after all. Beauty 
palls on a man. The harem is the only reasonable ar- 
rangement, and it has the advantage of being ordained by 
Scripture.” 

“ Yes ; every man finds an ally in the Scriptures, what- 
ever his vice may be.” 

“ Vice, Mr. Decker ! You don’t call that vice ? ” 

“You parted, then — you and the lady, the brunette?” 
said Decker, «ot noticing the question. 

“ Oh, yes ; she was right enough for a time, but I got 
tired of her.” 

“ Ah, you men of society, you are like butterflies. And 
what became of her ? ” 

“ Became of her — damn her ! ” 

Decker found it difficult to sit still. 

“Don’t curse the woman.” 

“ Damn her !’ exclaimed Tom, defiantly, as the scene on 
a first Sunday after Christmas occurred to him. “ You 
would curse if you knew the trick she served me.” 

“ But what of the trick you served her first, 
said Decker, with wall-acted coolness. 

“ Trick ’ said Tom, who only thought of that never-to 
be-forgotten Sunday. “She was a strumpet before I knew 
her.” 

“ Tom Sleaford, you lie !’ exclaimed Decker, springing 
to his feet. 

The ci-devant captain leaned back in his chair, and stared 
at the white face with its never-fading flush under the 
eyes. 

“ I beg your pardon, Captain Gardner,’ said Decker. 

“ Really I was not thinking what I said. You see we 
Americans are sensitive about our women.” 


CRUEL LONDON. 363 

Two hours after this incident, Tristram Decker was 
closeted with F^ien Pasha. 

“ I’ll shoot him I” said Decker. 

“ Monsieur knows his own business best,” said Dr. 
Dampez. 

“ The low, crawling lying thief ; he ought to die twenty 
deaths!” 

Decker paced the room, stopping now and then to 
cough. 

“ A duel is easy. Are you a good shot ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Insult and call him out.” 

“ I dreamt this morning — it was a wakeful dream : I 
knew it was a dream, and it seemed as if I prolonged it at 
will — I dreamt that he sat before me in The Cottage at 
Essam ; he was dead, except his brain ; I told him his history 
and mine ; I laughed at his agony as it was depicted in his 
face ; I told him of her wealth ; I explained my first hopes 
about him, that a reconciliation might be possible ; I hit 
him in the face ; I gloated over him like an Indian with an 
enemy tied up for torture and death ; I told him he would 
lie in his coffin alive in the very house w^here he had seduced 
her and disowned her; and I awoke laughing.” 

Decker coughed and struggled to a seat. 

“ My pupil, to talk like this is madness ; you are losing 
your self-control. I gif you a leetle soothing draught, see.” 

The doctor took a phial from his pocket, poured half its 
contents into a tumbler of water. Decker drank it and sat 
down. 

“ You haf gif me all your confidence, more than I wish. 
I haf gif myself to you in return for money that make me 
income for life. I sell myself to you, Some philosopher 
sell to le diable ; I to Croesus, and when I sell I am yours, 
but with condition, you make a plan, you carry it out or 
not, it is done or you leaf it alone.” 

“ Forgive me, doctor. It must not be myself whom I 
consider, but a woman, and you will pardon me that I do 
not say who she is. If I shoot him, as I would at Decker’s 
Gulch, scandal seizes upon her; it we fight a duel, it is not 
that I value life, but an accident might leave him in the 
world to persecute and torture that woman and her child.” 

“Well, well, that is sentiments, and not for me; philo- 
sophie dispense with that; keep it in your own breast, 


864 


CRUEL LONDON. 


monsieur ; only, once for all, and the last t^e, is your first 
plan to stand ? ” 

‘‘ It is,” said Decker, “ if that dream may come true.” 

His face was haggard, his lips apart, he gasped for 
breath. 

“ To-day is Monday. On Friday you take him to your 
Euglish estate. After dinner your dream.” 

The doctor took a heavy pinch of snuff. Decker 
nodded his satisfaction. 

“ And now, monsieur, you sleep a leetle. Did Monsieur 
le Oapitaine tell you he insult me after you leaf Madame 
Gardner’s last night ? ” 

“ No.” 

“ Ah, he did ; he was a leetle drunk, and he call me a 
name which was impolite and a lie.” 

“What did you do ? ” 

“ I came home to my leetle room in this quarter, which 
I haf for years when J am in Paris, a leetle room where I 
am Dr. Dampez and not Fabien Pasha ; I came home, I 
mix a leetle of my own secret, Numbres Two, I call it, and 
I take my pinch of snuff and I say, “ Wait, Monsieur le 
Capitaine, I come for yon.” But nevair mind that ; you 
now go to sleep a leetle, this week I build you up, I gif you 
courage, I make for you strength, a heaven on the earth 
for you ; a hell for the English thief.” 

Decker slept. Dampez took snuff and watched him. 

A new motive had strengthened the Dampez-Decker 
alliance, and had, at the same time, increased the necessity 
for caution. Madame Gardner was the lady who had been 
tried in London the Longville poisoning case. She - had 
given Dampez to understand that she was in Italy. The 
relationship between her and Dr. Dampez had been of a 
more intimate character than patient and doctor. This 
was suspected by judge and jury, but never proved. Ma- 
dame had met Captain Gardner at Boulogne and Paris. 
Tom Sleaford was a bold wooer, as the reader knows. 
They lived at the Villa Adrienne. In less that six months 
it was turned into a gambling-house, and madame became 
the ostensible proprietress. She knew Dampez under his 
disguise of Fabien Pasha ; but there was at once a tacit 
understanding between them, arrived at as if by instinct, 
that they would elect to be strangers. 

“ I am a philosopher,” said Dampez to himself, while 
contemplating Decker ; “ but I haf a strange unaccountable 


CRUEL LONDON. 


3G5 


sympathies with this young man. He shall die, that 
English thief of the night ; it shall be a revenge for him 
and for me,” 

On the Thursday of the same week Decker had arranged 
that Tom Sleaford should receive the news of Caroline Vir- 
ginia Gardner’s accession of fortune. He was present when 
the captain received the letter. 

“ You have good news ? ” said Decker. 

“ The devil does take care of his own,” said Tom. “ ’Pon 
my soul I think it’s best to chuck over everything the 
world calls respectable, and be a free lance.” 

“ You have come into a fortune ? ” 

“Yes, my wife has ; it’s all the same.” 

“ Your wife ? ” 

“Yes I’ll show her whether I am her husband or not,” 
he exclaimed, snapping Ins fingers. 

“ Do you mean madame, at the Villa Adrienne ? ” 

“ Do I mean Madame Longville ! * Curse her ! Ho. 
Listen,” he said, reading from the letter in his hand ; “ the 
American Government, or a Federal commander, one or the 
other, hare compensated her for all her father lost. I don’t 
know all the facts, but she’s now worth more than a million, 
and she is living in grand style at Lancaster Gate.” 

“ That must be old Graham Denton’s daughter,” said 
Decker. 

“ You’ve hit it,” said Tom, folding up the letter. “By 
Jupiter, I’ll lead her a dance ! ” 

“ She is your wife, you say ? ” 

“ Yes, my wife.” 

“ It is reported in London that she is a single woman. 
When I came away, American society was talking about 
the case.” 

“ This letter’s true, then ? ” 

“ Oh ves, quite true ; everybody’s talking of it in Lon- 
don.” 

“ What does she call herself, then ? ” 

“ Miss Caroline Denton, I presume.” 

“ She is my wife. Decker, and I can claim everything 
she possesses.” 

“ She can’t be the brunette, the American girl you were 
telling me of the other day ? ” 

« ]^o^w^ell, not exactly, but she’s a vixen, for all that. 
Oh, but we shall be good friends now ! I shall just have to 
show her who the master is to begin with, and then ? You 


366 


/ 


% 

CRUEL LONDOX. 


must come and see us, Decker ; there will be a pair of us 
then — a pair of millionaires,” 

“ I don’t know about that,” said Decker. “ I think there 
would soon only be one millionaire if we continued to play 
cards. However I’m glad you’ve come into all this money. 
I congratulate you.” 

Decker put out his hand. It was cold and chilly. 

“ I shall go to London on Saturday,” said the captain. 

“ Come to Essam with me, en route.''' 

“ To where ? ” 

“ The Cottage, Vale of Essam.” 

“ What do you mean ? ” 

“ I bought it a few weeks ago.” 

“ You did ? ” 

“ Yes, is tliat so odd? Don’t think that interferes with 
the Quorn estate. You have undertaken to engineer that 
business for me. ’ 

“ Yes,” said Tom, his face still full of a surprised expres- 
sion. “ You must be awfully rich Decker.” 

“ Didn’t your father tell yoif so ? ” 

“ Yes; but we had a trifling, misunderstanding, and he 
did not conclude the business. I left him in a huff. But 
it is strange you should buy The Cottage. It’s a stunning 
place for a quiet lark. Damme if I shouldn’t like to see the 
place again ! I was down on my luck when I left it.” 

“ This is your plan, then. We get there in time for din- 
ner to-morrow night ; and on Saturday we will go up to 
town together. What do you say ? ” 

“ The fact is. Decker, I’ve won so much of your money 
that I feel myself at your command, Are there billiard 
tables at Essam ? ” 

“Yes, I believe so; I bought the place furnished as it 
stood.” 

“You don’t know how strange this is,” said the captain. 
“ I’ll go with you. I’ll give you your revenge at billiards 
in your own house ; and before we go to-bed to-morrow night. 
I’ll tell you all about it. Meanwhile, look at this.” 

He unlocked a travelling-case and produced a document. 
It was the original marriage certificate of which Decker had 
the copy. Captain Gardner read it. 

“ Then you married in a name not your own ? ” 

“ Precisely.” 

“ And is such a marriage legal ? ” 

“To-day I shall take this before a proper ofliccr. I 


CRCEL LONDON. 


367 


don’t know what they call hitn in Paris, but there is an 
English solicitor who will tell me all about it. I shall make 
an affidavit that I, Tom Sleaford, am Philip Gardner. It’s 
just as well to be properly armed when you go to take pos- 
session of property which somebody else may claim. I shall 
pin that affidavit to the certificate, and put both into my 
pocket-book, for use or not, as circumstances may require, 
and on Saturday night I shall sleep in my new house at 
Lancaster Gate. Damme, Pm in luck ! ” 

Tom Sleaford leaned back in his chair and uttered a 
hard sinister chuckle, which conveyed to Decker, more 
than words, the utter heartlessness of the man whom he 
was now more than-^^^er resolved not to leave behind him 
.when he should be'stimmoned to go. 

Captain Gardner was late in arriving at the Villa 
Adrienne on this Thursday night. lie said he had only 
just left Dr. Fleury’s. “ VVhat was the matter? ” they all 
asked. He had been taken ill in the street, he said All 
he remembered was that he had suddenly lost the use of 
his limbs. A soldier caught him, and he lay in his arms to 
all appearance insensible. “ But I was as sensible,” he 
continued, “ as I am at this moment. I couldn’t move, I 
couldn’t speak, but I was all right otherwise. The fit lasted 
ten minutes, I suppose. The}’- carried me to Fleury’s. He 
says I drink, too much, smoke too much, and live too fast; 
I ought to marry and settle down to a life of regularity. I 
told him that was just the thing I was going to do ; that in 
fact I had done half of it, but had not yet settled down.” 
madame looked at Fabien Pasha as the captain described 
his symptoms ; but in a short time the incident was for- 
gotten in play, and it found almost utter oblivion when 
Captain Gardner, excited by wine and some taunting re- 
mark of madame’s, suddenly rose, and in a drunken speech 
informed the company that he had that day given notice to 
dissolve the partnership between himself and Madame 
Longville, and that he was going to leave Paris to join his 
real wife in London on the next day. Madame said some 
bitter things in reply. She pressed Fabien Pasha’s hand 
at parting, and begged he would call and see her the next 
day alone. 

. “ By the time you arrive at Essam, a leetle sooner, a 
leetle later,” said Dr. Dampez, as daylight was stealing into 
his private room, where they had appointed to meet after 
leaving the Villa Adrienne, “ that fit will come on again ; 


868 


CRUEL LONDON. 


it is better it should, that there may be no mystery at the 
last ; haf a doctor call, and he will talk of you cannot burn 
a candle at both ends, and the fatal result that come of 
debauchery and dissii^ation. After dinner, at night, your 
dream come true.” 

Decker shuddered. 

“I go to London on Friday night; on Saturday you 
find me, if you want me, at the old place ; if you not come, 
you find me on Tuesday at Villa Adrienne. I haf done all 
for you I can ; now you act for yourself. I give you the 
leetle phial which I call ISTombre Trois. In the water- 
bottle or the wine. Comprenez-vous f Ah, that is good. 
Au revoir.^ it may be adieu! Well, w;ejshall see.” 

And it came to pass, just as Dr. Dampez had foretold, 
that Captain Gardner was taken ill on the platform at* 
Essam, and that on his recovery from the fit half an hour 
afterwards the local surgeon had delivered himself of a 
homily on fast living and the '\iices of dissipation. Unfor- 
tunately for the patient the doctor knew him again, and his 
life at Essam rose up to bear witness against him, and to 
justify the local practitioner’s words. 

The peace of Essam fell upon the troubled soul of 
Tristram Decker. The hum of the summer atmosphere, 
full of gentle life, sung a lullaby to the fiowers. At the 
gate, as they entered the Cottage precincts, a sensation of 
awe possessed him. Among the clustering roses that 
climbed the portals of the house a sweet face seemed to be 
looking at him. His companion asked him what he was 
staring at. But for a red flush under the eyes Decker’s 
face was extremely pale. His answer to his companion 
was a fit of coughing. It occurred to Tom Sleaford that 
the x\merican had not long to live. But after a little 
while Decker seemed strong again, and his guest, pulling 
himself together with a bottle of champagne, was full of 
boisterous spirits. 

Decker proposed a walk in the grounds. His guest 
said he knew them too well. He would prefer a game at 
billiards. He was anxious to give his friend a fair chance 
to recoup his losses. The tables were in excellent condi- 
tion. But Decker found no pecuniary revenge in the game. 
At last Sleaford proposed to play for The Cottage. He had 
already won enormously. Decker said no, he would not 
risk The Cottage, as he had bequeathed it to a lady. As a 
closing bet he had in his pocket-book a two thousand pound 


CRUEL LONDON, 


369 


bank-note ; they would play one game for that sum, and 
that must close their transaction for the present. Decker 
lost. When they had washed their hands and sat down to 
smoke a cigarette before dinner, Decker led the conversar 
tion up to Sleaford’s visit to Lancaster Gate. 

“Now, look here, captain,” said Decker, presently; 
“ you have plenty of money — why not let that little woman, 
in London enjoy her good fortune in her own way without 
interfering with her? ” 

“ What do you mean ? ” 

“You say she is a vixen,and I conclude you do not love 
her. ” 

“ Love her ! Bah ! ” 

“I have heard she is an unassuming, quiet, kindly 
lady. ” 

“ Indeed ! You should have heard her talk to me on 
the lawn outside. ” 

“ But you didn’t treat her quite well, eh ? ” 

“ Didn’t I ! And what of her ? How has she treated me? 
Comes into a fortune and never says a word. I might be 
starving for what she knows or cares. I’ll show her I I’ll 
wake her up, never fear ! ” 

“ Didn’t you tell her she was not your wife, you had 
tricked her ? ” 

“ What of that? You seem to take a great interest in 
my wife ? ” 

“ I do ; I knew her father. ” 

“ Indeed ; well, if you will come with me to-morrow you 
shall know her. ” 

“ Don’t think me obtrusive. Captain Gardner ; but, know- 
ing her father, and feeling an interest in my countrywoman, 
let me ask you, is there any chance of your grant ng her a 
divorce, and 

“A what?” 

“ A divorce. ” * . 

“ What for ? ” 

“ On the ground of desertion, say ; that, I believe, is 
sufficent. ” 

“ Not on any account. I like her. Just now I love her. 
Why, what are you talking about ? Didn’t old Fleury 
advise me to marry and settle down ? I’m going to do it, 
now that I’ve something to settle upon. Why, my dear 
friend, I mean to cut a dash in London this very season. A 


870 


CRUEL LONDON. 


mail phaeton in the Park, a pretty wife by ray side. Dam- 
me, I’ll make Lancaster Gate howl, as you Yankees say ! ” 
The speaker laughed that hard, metallic laugh which 
had shaken Decker’s nerves before. It only now made them 
rigid. lie bit his lip as the Englishman looked admiringly 
at himself in a mirror, and twirled the waxed ends of his 
moustache. The cruel malice of the face, framed in the 
black mounting of the glass, struck Decker like a blow, 
stimulating his wavering spirit. 

“Look here, Mr. Decker, ” continued the captain, after 
surveying himself ; “ Caroline Virginia Denton is my wife. 
When she did not know it I gave her the chance to be re- 
lieved of me. In return she served me a dirty trick. She 
joined a conspiracy against me, in combination with a fellow 
named Brayford. I’ll tell you what it was after dinner, since 
you take such an interest in her. ” 

The speaker’s face expressed intense malice as he paused 
to look at Decker and ask a question-— 

“ Do you think she has a heart ? ” 

“ I know she has. ” 

“ Do you believe hearts can .be broken ? ” 

“ I know they can, ” said Decker sadly. 

“ Then, by the God above me. I’ll break that woman’s 
heart clean in two ! ” 

The speaker stamped his footas he uttered the diabolical 
threat, and Decker laughed. Tom Sleaford had never 
heard his companion laugh before. It was not alone on 
that account that he was startled ; but there was something 
so incongruous in Decker’s previous remarks and his laugh- 
ter at what ought to have enraged him that Tom turned 
sharply round. 

“ You laughed ? ” 

“ I did. ” 

“ I thought you would have been mad. ” 

“ There was a time when I s'hould have been. ” 

There was a look of triumph in Decker’s blue eyes 
which astonished Tom Sleaford more and more. 

“ You are a queer fellow, Mr. Tristram Decker.” 

“ I am. I was trying to soften you in the interest of 
Caroline Denton, thinking I could perhaps wipe out the 
past, and make you friends. Have, you ever tried to push 
some painful event that has blighted your happiness right 
away into the shadow? ” 

“ Not I ! I don’t know what you mean. But I’d like 


CRUEL LONDON. 


871 


to see the man woman or child who’d wipe out of my 
memory a certain event that happened in Lincolnshire. 
Well I don’t know — they may do it next w^eek, perhaps, 
when Tom Sleaford has proclaimed his marriage. I’ll show 
ray lady ! And as for Mr. Brayford I’ll break his back.” 

“ Will he be there ? ” asked Decker, who seemed to Slea- 
ford to have become quite jocular over the business. 

“ He will.” 

“ Shall you do it in the daylight ? ” 

“ Whenever the opportunity occurs.” 

“ He’s a strong fellow, and smart too ?” 

“ You know him, then ? ” 

“ He is a friend of Mr. John Kerman’s.”* 

“ You know him too ? ” 

“ We are partners.” 

“ In w'-hat ? ” 

“ Gold mines and other property.” 

“ Kerman ! ” exclaimed Sleaford. 

“ Yes; he married a Miss Crosby.” 

“ Married ! When ? ” 

“ A fortnight ago, I think. Since you and I first met.” 

“ You astonish me ! The governor said nothing of this.” 

“ Perhaps he did not know it.” 

“ Mr. Decker you are a mystery to me.” 

“Am I ! We shall be better acquainted soon.” 

“ What do you mean ? There is something strange in 
your manner. You are laughing at me.” 

“ No ; it amuses me to think how small the world is, and 
how we all come together, everybody we have ever heard 
of or known. Kerman used to talk of you in the Sacra- 
mento, when we were winning our fortunes.” 

“ Indeed ! ” 

“ He said you were a good fellow. I think he thought so. 
But he didn’t know the world.” 

“ Then I am not a good fellow ? ” 

“ Good fellows don’t want to trample on helpless women.” 

“ No ? Then I’m a bad fellow, for I do, and I will — on 
one of the sex, at any rate.” 

“ You brute !” exclaimed Decker, unable to maintain the 
calm sarcastic tone which he had assumed ; “ if you were in 
America I would ” 

Decker had risen to his feet. His passion induced a fit 
of coughing, which left him panting on a seat. 

“ I’m a fool,” he said when he could speak. “Don’t let 


872 


CRUEL LONDON. 


ns talk of this business any more. I owe you an apology ; 
you are in my own house — it is not for the host to insult his 
guest.” 

“ Say no more about it. If I had lost as much money 
to you as you have to me I should be riled ; I might even 
try to pick a, quarrel with you.” 

iJinner was announced. 

It was a plain English dinner, cooked and served by the 
servants, who hsd been taken over with the house by Sparco 
at Decker’s request. When it was finished Decker proposed 
another game of billiards. 

“ You can go to bed,” said Decker to the woman who 
waited on thern^. “ Leave out some soda, brandy, and 
champagne.” 

They had finished two games, and Decker had won both 
of them, to the surprise of his ^guest, when Philip Gardner, 
alias Tom Sleaford, staggered, and would have fallen had 
not Decker caught him and laid him on a couch, beneath 
the window that looked out upon the wood, where the birds 
had seemed to listen to the woman prattling to a child, some 
summers back, in the field that was once more waiting for 
the haymakers. 

Tom Sleaford looked helplessly at Decker. 

“ This is your third attack ? ” said Decker. 

The patient moved his lips. 

“ It is your last ” said Decker, with the solemn air of 
a judge pronouncing a culprit’s doom. 

There was a visible effort on the part of the unhappy 
^wretch to move. 

“ You are poisoned. Listen. You can understand all I 
say ? ” 

The staring eyes of the stricken man looked an affirma- 
tive answer. 

“ If you had had a spark of manliness in your composition 
you should have been spared. Whether it is God’s work 
this conclusion of a diabolical career, or mine, I know not 
The supreme moment is more terrible than I concluded. If 
you think there is a God, pray to Him, Your faculties are 
still under your own control. Pray if you like, but w^aste 
no time.” 

After a short pause, Decker resumed : — 

“ Originally it was in my mind to gloat over you when 
this last scene should come : to remind you of your brutal 
and inhuman conduct ; to tell you I loved Caroline Denton 


CRUEL LONDON. 


373 


so truly that I would one day have found contentment in 
knowing that she was happy with another ; to torture you 
with the knowledge that just as fortune is within your grip 
it is I who strike you down ; to tell yon that I condescend 
to become an assassin, to save your wife from scandal ; 
Fabien Pasha is the famous, or infamous Dr. Dampez ; 
his draughts leave no sign for coroner’s inquests ; besides, 
Dr. Fleury told you from what complaint you suffered, 
and your local physician has already confirmed that opinion. 
Dr. Dampez is a great man. He has calculated your death 
at the third attack almost to a question of minutes.” 

The eyes of the dying man moved. An expression of 
agony passed over the dry, hard features. • 

“ If 1 could have fought you in a duel, or shot you in a 
quarrel, I would have preferred it to the cowardly secrecy 
of Fabien Pasha’s artful aid ; but I had resolved that Caro- 
line Denton’s life should from henceforth be unruffled,except 
by her memories of the past ; that your death should appear 
to be the natural result of your infamous life ; that she 
should find peace in early widowhood, and, if wealth can 
give contentment, the pleasure of knowing that every wish 
that money can satisfy may be hers. To-day my heart failed 
me. I would once, I think, have changed my plans. One 
ray of human light from your black heart might have made 
me pause. You remember that I, laughed. No wonder it 
startled you. Hot less was I surprised myself. The execu- 
tioner bad pronounced your final doom in that mocking 
laugh. Hemesis was at your elbow ; for it needed a slight 
blending of the wine you liked so much to bring on this 
third and last attack. Tom Sleaford, alias Philip Gardner, 
your body is already dead. Your brain is alive and active. 
Listen ! The money in your pockets and in your travelling 
case belongs to your wife. I shall take care that she is in 
speedy possession of the certificate of her marriage and your 
affidavit. If you prayed just now, and there is a God to hear 
you, it may be a consolation to you to know that you have 
a son who has inherited all his mother’s goodness and virtue 
and that in a son’s love and devotion she may forget a hus- 
band’s cruelty and dishonor. Philip Gardner, aliasTom Slea- 
ford, adieu ! I go to call tlie servants. They will carry you 
to a bedroom which will recall past days. They will send for 
that doctor who knows you. He will say that you are dead. 
You will be alive all the time. You will liear them say what 
a hard, cruel man you were while you were living. If all this 


CRUEL LOiVEOuV. 


i 

oi4 

does not make you feel that, if there is not a God, there is at 
least some eternal law of reward and punishment, you will 
die as you lived — a hypocritical, heartless blackguard. On 
the other hand; should the justice of your death and the 
manner of it touch your dull, leaden soul, you will relent, 
and if you do, according to the Scriptures, you will go to 
heaven and be happy; and if you don’t you will go to hell, 
and you can rejoice over me, for you will then understand, 
how much you have made me suffer in this world, which 
but for you, might have been a heaven for me ! Farewell ! 
In an hour you will be a dead man. Make the most of 
your time !” 

Just as Decker had foretold, so it came to pass ; and the 
next day Caroline Virginia Denton Sleaford, at one and the 
same time, knew that she was a wife and a widow I 


CHAPTER IV. 

PEACE. 

Time has its own beneficent method of smoothing the 
rugged ways of sadness and sorrow. When, a year after 
the burial of Tom Sleaford, there came to England Tris- 
tram Decker’s last message to John Kerman and Caroline 
Gardner-Sleaford, with the news that he had found his way 
back to New York, and died there in the arms of his father, 
there was heartfelt and bitter mourning in two households 
three thousand miles from the shores of Manhattan. But 
it has been ordained that the mind shall accustom itself to 
the visits of Death, and see in them the removal of loved 
ones to a better land. It is a comforting and a holy phil- 
osophy that almost finds an earthly pleasure in contempla- 
ting the joys of a future state. 

The beautiful wddow who spent half the year at Lancas- 
ter Gate and the other half in the Vale of Essam was a 
happy woman. ‘Her’s was the bliss of living to do good and 
to enjoy the pleasures of art. From the moment when we 
saw her standing upon that ship in the distant ])ort, destined 
to bring with her the black threads of trouble which should 


CRUEL LONDON, 


376 


complete the weft of this romance, she was also fated to be 
the good angel of the legend which the weaver's shuttle bad 
to portray in his cloth of silk and gold. 

The American woman was destined to play the part of 
Fortuna. Her hand served to soften the blow which fell 
upon Mr. and Mrs. Roper, and upon Emily Tavener and 
her husband, when a crowd of duped depositors thronged 
round a house in Baker Street, and sacked the financial 
trap of Jeremiah Sleaford. Her hand succored many of 
the poor people who had suffered by the failure ; and Mr. 
Jabez Thompson found means to help the others. It is not 
always true that the wicked are punished in this world in 
proportion to their deserts. At this very moment, while I 
am writing these lines, I am informed that Mrs Jeremiah 
Sleaford last month joined her husband at a delightful 
village in the kingdom of Granada, which she reported in a 
letter to be “ under the beautiful shadow of the Alpujarras, 
which, my dear, the Moors considered to be part of heaven ; 
and your father is contented and happy, freed from the cares 
of finance, which he vows he will not touch again. Thanks 
to his thoughtfulness, we have enough for all our wants, and 
though the odious English laws and his cruel enemies in 
London have made England impossible for us, we shall not 
complain, now that our dear children, for whom alone your 
father fought and strove always, are settled and happy ; but 
we hope that Emily will come over with Mr. Tavener and 
visit us soon ; your father would so much like Fred to paint 
some of this scenery ; you, my dear Patty, might also find 
some beautiful effects of sunshine ; later in the year we pro- 
pose to travel. Seville is considered to be a lovely city for 
the winter, and if Mr. Roper and you, my dear child, will 
meet us there, your father says oranges can be plucked and 
eaten in the open air when London is suffering from fog and 
chill and snow, which is a comfort to think of when one is 
an exile in a strange land. We also find consolation in 
knowing that I have been able to provide you with a house 
for your married life, and your father now fully realizes the 
benefit of having had the Fitzroy Square property put into set- 
tlement, and I hope you have had your £10,000 secured in the 
same way.” Patty and Roper found that they suited each 
other well, and they did not propose to winter at Seville, 
for the youngest of the Sleaford girls was engrossed in the 
study of a pink and white subj'ect which gave her a great 
deal more trouble than the production of certain studies in 


376 


CRUEL LONDON. 


water-colors which now adorn the walls of the drawing- 
room at Fitzroy Square. Jeremiah’s gi’and son is said to be 
the image of his mamma ; indeed, Emily tells Fred that “ it 
is quite a baby doll, in complexion and in features.” Tim 
Maloney sticks to the old house at present, and has taken a 
fancy to the baby ; though he sometimes threatens to join 
“ the masther” in foreign parts and he varies this with the 
hope that “ Ould Ireland,” may want his services soon, seeing 
that the latest report of a celebrated Fenian leader announces 
“ the decline and fall of the British Empire, and the coming 
conquest of England by the gallant sons of Erin.” It is 
true Tim winks and utters a genial “ bedad” when he tells 
Mr. Roper that this is one of the events that may call him 
suddenly away from London ; though he promises, when the 
Irish- American contingent sails over the sea to join the Rib- 
bonmen, the Whiteboys, and the Fenians of Connaught in 
sacking London, the corner house of Fitzroy Square shall 
be spared, and be jabers but he doesn’t know he won’t 
have the entire square preserved in honor of the yodng mas- 
ter, though he declines to make any binding promise upon 
that point. 

Brayford is still the private secretary of Mr. John 
Kerman, though he continues to reside in London, the 
better to advise Mrs. Gardner-Sleaford in regard to the 
management of her property, and also to fulfil the duties of 
private almoner to that estimable lady. The Footlights Club 
came to an ignominious end a year ago, but the few dis- 
linguished members of it have signed a requisition to their 
old friend Harry Brayford to join them in the formation 
of a new society on the old lines. He has already named 
the new club in memory of a dear friend who no longer 
studies the first page of a morning paper, and dwells upon 
the genius of his chief. It is to be called “ The Wonner.” 
Mr. Brayford has already purchased for the new rooms a 
grand piano, and it is his intention to revive the once 
familiar chant in which the Wonners, like their predeces- 
sors, will declare their undying affection for “ Old Brown’s 
Daughter,” their united belief in the propriety of her con- 
duct and their full and settled determination, suj^posing 
they were a lord mayor, a marquis, or an earl, to marry no 
other lady than old Brown’s girl. Brayford, for the first 
and last time, really carried out his idea of the three-act 
epitaph, when l\e raised a monument to “ The Wonner ; ” 
and after some revision by the directors of the cemetery, 


CZ!JjhL LOA-'DON. 


r>77 

and a discussion with the clergyman of the parish, he was 
allowed to have it engraved upon a tablet, which though a 
well-intended and not unworthy tribute to “ my intellectual 
friend, and once the partner of my literary toils,” is a curi- 
ous example of that grim'satire which too often characterizes 
memorial honors to posthumous frame, Brayford idealized 
Mr. W,, who will go down to posterity as an eccentric 
genius in whose honor a company of celebrated men 
founded a fantastic club. 

Monsieur Favart captured the fascinating Weaver, on 
the eve of her marriage, in New York, with the captain of 
the ocean steamer in which she had crossed the Atlantic. 
She had been the life and soul of the vessel during a very 
pleasant voyage. The captain was a young officer who had 
just been promoted. Some of the male passengers, who 
were jealous of the lady’s preference for the captain, said he 
was too inexperienced for his position. They knew better 
than that, for he had sailed the sea, man and boy, for five 
and twenty years. It flattered them in their declared opin- 
ions of his verdancy when on their return voyage in a sister 
ship they learnt that the lovely Miss Beauchamp Dudley, as 
Miss Weaver called herself, had been arrested for fraud, 
and taken to England. Major Wenn, in an unbecoming 
prison dress at a certain convict prison, confided to the 
• chaplain that he thought it rather hard he should get five 
years, and Weaver only six months. He concluded that 
the judge had been. led away from the path of duty by 
‘ Isy’s siren smile.” The chaplain turned out to have been 
an old friend of Wenn’s in India, and this was the one ray 
of light that illuminated the mind of the reflective major, as 
he helped to make the prison clothing, under the watchful 
eye of a warder, who had his sword by his side, and all 
manner of sanguinary weapons in the expressions of his face. 
Mr. Fitzherbert Robinson looked at the murky daylight as 
it crept through the bars of a prison in a country adjacent 
to the one which encompassed the gallant Major Wenn. 
Robinson had not been broken in for prison life by the dis- 
cipline of a military career. While Major Wenn fell into a 
strict observance of prison regulations, Mr. Fitzherbert 
Robinson resisted the unaccustomed pressure, and had be- 
come acquainted with a dark cell and a light diet, Nemesis 
was surely nodding when, with these men under lock and 
key, Mr. Maclosky Jones still flourished. Perhaps the jus- 
tice of the situation was considered poetically met in the 


378 


Cji.UEL LOISTDON. 


fact that Mr. Maclosl y Jones had made a fortune out of 
Sleaford’s Omaha scrij't, which had suddenly and unexpect- 
edly realized all the wild dreams of the infatuated specu- 
lator in mines. Maclosky had recently taken to preaching, 
and he promises to become a shining light as president of a 
new society for converting the Jews to a sense of their 
misery in being outside the fold to which Mr. Maclosky 
Jones lends the sanction of his name and the financial aid 
of one hundred pounds per annum. 

Summer time at Essam comes, with perfumed breath and 
songs of birds, to find a thoughtful hostess surrounded by 
English friends ; Autumn is full of ripened joyfulness at 
Manor Farm ; and the sunshine that illumines grateful 
hearts is most like heaven, when it follows the chastening 
of Winter winds. 


THE END 


WOMAN’S Place To-day. 

Four lectures in reply to the Lenten lectures on “Woman,” by the Rev. f 
Morgan Dix, D.JD., of Trinity Church, New York. 

By Lillie Devereux Blake. 

No. 104, liOVELIi’S lilBRAnir, Paper Covers, 20 CeMts, 
Ciotli Limp, 50 Cents. 

Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake last evening entertained an audience that filled 
Frobisher’s Hall, in East Fdurteenth Street, by a witty and sarcastic handling 
of the recent Lenten talk of the Kev. Dr. Morgan Dix on the follies of women 
of society.— JVezt; York Times. 

Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake is a very eloquent lady, and a thorn in the side 
of the Rev. Dr. Dix, and gentlemen who, like him, presume to say that woman 
is not man’s equal, if not his superior. Mrs. Blake in her reply to Dr. Dix’s 
recent lecture upon “Divorce, ’* made some interesting remarks upon the sex 
to which she has the honor to belong .— York Commercial Advertiser. 

There is no denying that Mrs. Blake has, spartan-like, stood as a break-water 
to the surging flood Rector Dix has cast upon the so-called weaker sex with 
the hope of engulfing it. It is sad to see a gentleman in the position Dr. Dix 
occupies setting himself deliberately at w'ork to not only bring reproach upon 
the female sex, but to make us all look with comtempt upon our mothers and 
sisters. And the worst of his case is that he has shown that spirit in the male 
part of mankind, which is not at all creditable to it, of depreciating the in- 
tellect, the judgment, the ability and the capability of the female sex in order 
to elevate to a higher plane the male sex. According to Dr. Dix the world 
would, be better were there no more female children born. And he makes 
this argument in the face of the fact that there would be “ hell upon earth ” 
were It not for the influence of women, and such w'omen as Mrs. Lillie Devereux 
Blake, especially . — Albany Sunday Press. 


Mrs. Blake’s was the most interesting and poicy speech of the evening. She 
was in a sparkling mood and hit at everything and everybody that came to 
her mind. — Evening Telegram. N. Y. 

A stately lily of a wt'm.an, with dc lica^c features, a pair of great gray eyes that 
dilate as she speaks till tuey light her whole face like two great soft Bt&is.—The 
Independent. N. Y. 

* * * She advanced to the front of the platform, gesticulated gracefully 
and spoke vigorously, d fianily and without notes. — Eew York Citizen. 

* * * a most eloquent and polished oration. The peroration was a grand 
burst of eloquence. — Troy Times. 

Lillie Devereux Blake, blonde, brilliant, ptaccate, stylish, is a fluent speaker, 
of good platform presence, and argued wittily and Washington Post. 

T'here are very few speakers on the platform who have the brightness, 
vivacity and fluency of Lillie Devereux Blake. — Albany Svnday Pre^s. 

She is an easy, graceful sneaker, and wide-awake withal, bringing our fre- 
quent applause. — Hartford Times. 

Mrs. Blake s address was forcible and eloquent. The speaker was frequently 
interrupted by applause. — New York Times. 

The most brilliant lady speaker in the city. — New York Herald. 

Has the reputation of being the wittiest woman on the platform.— An- 

Mrs. Blake, who has a most pleasing address, then spoke; a strong vein of 
sarcasm, wit and humor pervaded the lady’s remarks. — Poughkeepsie hews. 

For Sale by all Newsdealers and Booksellers 

JOHN W. LOVELL CO., Publishers, 

14 & 16 Vesey Street, New York. 


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